No government has ever gone far enough in promoting or incentivising occupational health to effectively reduce pressure on the NHS or the tax burden on the population.
This is according to Matthew Gregson, executive director at Howden Employee Benefits, who was chairing a webinar organised by the brokerage earlier this week.
Gregson was responding to a question raised by Health & Protection about how the sector can act on Sir Charlie Mayfield’s call on insurers to develop risk pooling to enable SMEs to better access health benefits, with the pensions minister’s ruling out of auto enrolment for private medical insurance at last week’s ABI annual conference.
Right balance
Providing his own personal viewpoint, Gregson responded by saying: “I really believe that the right balance between the NHS and private cover should ultimately be between those of working age and in work and those before and after working age.
“I would personally love to see a situation, if the economics could be balanced out, where employers could be incentivised to provide healthcare to the people, and that the private sector was seen to be supporting private industry driving productivity, reducing absenteeism and so on.”
Other considerations
Gregson further pointed out that unlike pensions, there are tax and other broader considerations in terms of what level of new infrastructure in the form of hospitals and consultants and other treatment access would be required to service potentially “millions” of new medical insurance members.
“But ultimately, I do think some further exploration is needed and consecutive governments have never gone far enough with this idea of incentivising or promoting occupational health or any other health in the workplace,” he continued.
“This question of whether the tax burden can be removed has never been truly explored or pushed to the top of the agenda.”