When a CEO fails to grasp the nuances of their company’s health care costs, it’s not just the bottom line that suffers. Employee efficiency and productivity could plummet, too, not to mention the corrosion of company culture. For these reasons, billionaire entrepreneur and Cost Plus Drugs cofounder Mark Cuban urges business leaders to take a hard look at how their health dollars are spent.
“Even though health insurance costs are the second-largest line item after payroll, CEOs don’t really understand it or know anything about it,” Cuban tells Fortune. “You have employees that are more worried about whether their kids can get their medications paid for by the company insurance, or whether they’re going to be able to get the surgery that they know they need and that the doctor recommends, but the insurance company is not approving.”
