Tribute to Harris Rosen
Harris Rosen — Sept. 9, 1939 - Nov. 24, 2024
Brilliant entrepreneur, selfless philanthropist, visionary health-care champion
Many knew and admired Harris Rosen as the entrepreneur behind the Rosen Hotels & Resorts, operating a successful hotel chain with properties throughout Orlando’s theme park region. Others also knew him for his community philanthropy, revitalizing underserved communities and providing college scholarships and preschool educations.
While those accomplishments are remarkable by any measure, less known but no less profound is Mr. Rosen’s remarkable contribution to health care. The revolutionary health-care model he created for his employees is one other companies are replicating to great success, cutting their health-care costs in half, and saving hundreds of millions of dollars.
Mr. Rosen recognized early on that a healthy workforce benefits the bottom line, so he made sure his employees had access to excellent health care. However, as the cost of insurance premiums kept rising outpacing inflation, he made the bold, pioneering move over 30 years ago to reject the status quo and do something then unheard of. He cut ties with his commercial health insurance carrier and created RosenCare, a self-insured program that offered on-site medical care, pharmacy services, and direct-contracting with outside providers. He projected the move would cut his health-care costs by 40% to 60%. He was right.
He staffed the on-site medical facility with doctors, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, physical therapists, a dietitian, a podiatrist, a chiropractor, and ancillary staff trained and equipped to handle almost all of the primary and even some secondary health-care needs for his employees and their dependents, nearly 6,000 covered lives.
After cutting out the inflationary middle players, he focused on wellness, prevention and chronic-care management. He contracted directly with surgical centers and local hospitals for acute and emergent care.
The cost for such a model was $6,000 a year total per covered life, or half the national average. Rosen employees pay around $800 in annual premiums for individuals and $2,400 per family. They pay no deductible, no coinsurance and usually no copay. In return, employees and their families have easy access to top-rate, personalized health care.
Since its inception, RosenCare has saved the hospitality company more than $400 million in health-care costs compared to what traditional group insurance would have cost. Mr. Rosen reinvested those savings into business expansion, hiring more workers, wage increases and other benefits, such as providing thousands of educational scholarships for not only his employees and their dependents, but for underserved Orlando communities.
Thankfully Rosen’s visionary model of providing better health care at a far lower cost has spread, and other companies are adopting it. He discussed his model with Patient Rights Advocate in this video.
More would use his model, he said in a U.S. News editorial several years ago, but for the lack of health-care price transparency: “One of the largest barriers preventing more widespread adoption of direct-contracting models such as RosenCare is the lack of clear pricing information from some health care providers, which traditionally do not reveal their prices until after treatment,” he wrote.
“Armed with a clear understanding of health-care prices, employers will have the power to disrupt the health-care status quo and be better able to reward their valuable employees, all while positively impacting their bottom lines. Just take a look at my company's experience for evidence.”
Indeed.
We at PRA were fortunate to call Harris Rosen a friend, advocate and ally in our fight for lower health-care costs and more transparency. While he is no longer physically with us, his substantial legacy, leadership and vision will live on for generations. We are dedicated to making sure.