Every company is a health care company, at least in the United States, where health spending accounts for 18% of U.S. gross domestic product.

So it behooves corporate leaders to start running their employee health benefits like a business, argues Jeff Immelt.

The former GE CEO—now a board member of Collective Health, venture partner at NEA, and chairman of Athenahealth—appeared at Fortune’s Brainstorm Health conference in San Diego on last Wednesday to argue that corporate chieftains could do more to address the health industry’s spiraling costs, even if they’re not formally in the health business to begin with.

“One of the failures of the U.S. healthcare system is that employers haven’t been very good purchasers of healthcare,” Immelt said. Run that effort like a business, and “that will be a catalyst…for how world change gets made.”

The former CEO said it took the 2008 global financial crisis for him to really scrutinize how much GE was spending on health care costs. It had grown 7% over more than two decades. “If a relatively big company only does that well as a purchaser, there’s something that’s fundamentally broken,” he said. “You can move the needle, but you have to be willing to take the risk. And it has to start with the CEO.”

That could include changing the company’s benefits, boosting awareness, negotiating, or just looking at the incredible spread of costs between individuals in different cities. Some therapies in the U.S. health system “have been transformed in the last 25 years,” Immelt said. Yet “we still spend $0.25 of the dollar on administrative costs.”

Cure cancer? Without question, he added—but perhaps we should solve the cost of inefficiencies of using the century-old X-ray machine first. “That’s where people get lost in healthcare—applying the tools to the most fundamental cases that are really going to make a difference,” he said.

Technology can certainly help, and artificial intelligence is promising. But “you need a brain and a body” to make A.I. successful—to make health data more transparent, to make it faster for a computer to dissect a bill, Immelt said.

Which means change starts in the corner office.

“If every CEO in the country would stand down for, like, two days and actually have their benefits people talk about how the benefits actually happen, how contracting actually happens,” what employees really feel, and so forth? Well, that would completely change the health care industry, Immelt said.

“We’re almost never too late,” he said, “because there are so many things that need to be fixed.”

至少在美国，每家公司都是医疗保健公司，该国的医疗支出占到了国内生产总值的18%。

杰夫·伊梅尔特表示，因此，公司的领导者有必要将员工的医疗福利当作一项业务来对待。

这位前通用电气的CEO如今是Collective Health的董事会成员、NEA的创业合伙人和Athenahealth的董事长。他出席了上周三在圣迭戈举办的《财富》头脑风暴健康大会，并表示公司的领导层应当用更多行动来应对健康产业不断攀升的成本，即使它们本来并不是正式的医疗保健公司。

伊梅尔特表示：“美国医疗保健制度体系的一大失败在于雇主并未在该领域妥善投入。”如果像对待业务一样对待它，就会“对世界的改变起到催化作用”。

这位前任CEO表示，2008年全球金融危机让他真正回顾了通用电气在医疗保健上的成本。过去20多年里，它以每年7%的速度递增。他说：“如果一家规模相对较大的公司只是一直这样扮演买方的角色，就需要从根本上去打破一些东西。你可以改变局面，但要愿意承担风险。改变必须从CEO开始。”

这包括调整公司福利、提高健康意识、谈判，或看看不同城市把成本分摊到个人上的惊人差别。伊梅尔特表示，美国医疗体系“在过去25年里已经发生了变化”。然而“我们仍旧把25%的成本花在行政开支上”。

他补充道，治疗癌症？毫无问题——但是我们或许应当减少使用那些上世纪老掉牙的X光机带来的低效成本。他说：“那就是人们在医疗领域的迷失之处——在大部分基本情况中应用工具会真正带来改变。”

技术当然可以提供帮助，而人工智能也大有前景。但伊梅尔特表示，“你需要大脑和身体”才能让人工智能获得成功，也就是让健康数据更加透明，提高计算机分析账单的速度。

这意味着顶层领导要首先开始改变。

伊梅尔特说：“如果国内的每位CEO能够抽出大概两天时间，让受益人谈谈究竟有什么福利，合约究竟怎么运作”，员工究竟有什么感受等等，会怎么样呢？这会完全改变卫生保健行业。

他说：“我们绝不会太晚，因为还有太多事情需要修正了。”（财富中文网）

译者：严匡正