BUSINESS.LEHIGH.EDU FALL 2023 5 “The more time you take to get somewhere, the more someone’s going to have to pay because there’s more fuel utilized (and wasted) while you’re just sitting there,” Zacharia says. “These additional costs eventually are paid for by the consumer.” In the Lehigh Business Supply Chain Risk Management Index—a quarterly report compiled by the Center for Supply Chain Research and the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals—one of the 10 risk factors measured is “Government Intervention.” Among the main factors supply chain professionals are concerned about, since the index was launched in 2020, are new regulations, tariffs, trade wars, government restrictions on source materials, source technologies, and Russia’s war on Ukraine, among others. “Actually, government intervention risk over almost three years has been relatively low,” Zacharia says. “That metric has been in the low 70s, while some of our highest risks went all the way up to 90.” Health Care If you want to know why government and business are so interdependent in the health care field, follow the money. “If we examine funding for health care, it has come increasingly from the public sector, but the provision of health care and insurance plans themselves are increasingly from the private sector,” Meyerhoefer says. “The reason why health care has become so intertwined with the government is just because the funds that pay for health care have shifted more toward public sources.” Between Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Medicare, greater numbers of children, adults and older Americans depend on some form of government funding for their health care. Medicaid expansion programs are covering more poor children than in the past. “Depending on the state, on average, these programs are covering kids up to 300% of the poverty line,” Meyerhoefer says. “That’s quite a few children. In the past, those children were either uninsured or they were insured through their parents—private sector plans that were limited in scope.” The health exchanges established under the ACA for people who are independently employed, or who can’t get health coverage through their employer, offer a different example of the intertwining of government and business in health care. “In this instance, a private company provides the insurance plan, but the insurance coverage is managed through a government exchange,” Meyerhoefer says. “The government establishes the health insurance marketplace, regulates the market and manages how those plans are offered to consumers. The private companies actually sell the insurance plans to consumers. It’s a public-private partnership.” Medicare Part C is known as a Medicare Advantage Plan. The plans are offered by private companies that have been approved by Medicare and, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
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