A division of Centene, the nation’s largest Medicaid insurer, has pledged to assist construct nearly $1 billion in inexpensive housing in eight states to handle a key determinant of health.
Speaking at AssetsAt Monday’s Brainstorm Health conference, Centene CEO Sarah London said the Centene Foundation has entered right into a multi-year partnership with inexpensive housing developer McCormack Baron Salazar to offer below-market loans for housing units.
The partnership will unlock $900 million in development funds and create 1000’s of housing units, London said. The issue of inexpensive housing is especially necessary to Centene members, London added.
“It’s about doing a lot with a little and doing something that our members perform exceptionally well at, and I think that aligns with our mission to transform not just healthcare, but the health of the communities we serve,” London said.
This reflects the incontrovertible fact that in America’s socially and economically stratified society, the health care system has little impact on health outcomes. These inequalities are evident in all the pieces from the disparate impact of the coronavirus pandemic to 15-year gap in life expectancy between the richest and the poorest Americans.
“We know that 80% of the things that drive health are non-medical. Eighty percent,” said Dr. Michelle Gourdine, senior vice chairman at CVS Health, at the beginning of the conference. “We could have the best doctors in the universe and that would only solve 20% of the problem.”
In recent years, public health has focused particularly on the impacts of housing as costs have skyrocketed and evidence of housing’s destructive impacts has mounted Housing instability. Last week, UnitedHealth Group announced that it has spent greater than $1 billion on inexpensive housing over the past decade. In 2022, Kaiser Permanente will too pledged $400 million for economic development and housing.
Access to inexpensive housing is especially necessary to at least one in 4 Americans enrolled in Medicaid, and there was a shortage of seven.3 million inexpensive housing units within the U.S. in 2023, based on the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
As London and other participants said Monday, most of what drives health is nonmedical. London added that across all demographic groups, some things people see as necessary to health include housing, food and access to child care, amongst others.
“We’re obviously making sure there’s access to health care, but we’re also thinking about what the other factors are in health outcomes,” London said.
