Cigna’s David Cordani, Business Leaders and Lawmakers Zoom In on Mental Health Care

Mental health has firmly become an issue that some of the most powerful business leaders and politicians actually want to talk about.

The subject was in the spotlight last Tuesday when the Business Roundtable and managed care insurer The Cigna Group (NYSE: CI) convened a “Mental Health Summit” in Washington, D.C., that featured two U.S. Senators and four CEOs of multinational outfits.

The Business Roundtable is a Washington-based nonprofit that lobbies on behalf of CEOs. In May, the group started an initiative to promote and support employee mental health, noting that mental health symptoms result in lost worker productivity, stemming from unplanned absences.

At the summit, CEOs voiced responsibility for the role they play in their worker’s mental health.

“Employers have an unmatched relationship of trust with their workers, and are integral in supporting their access to care,” said David Cordani, the CEO and board chair of Cigna Group, the Bloomfield, Connecticut-based company that reported nearly $200 billion in 2023 revenue – and over $5 billion in shareholder net income.

Cordani moderated a panel of U.S. Senators Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, and Pete Ricketts, a Republican from Nebraska.

The co-author of the 2016 Mental Health Reform Act and the 2019 Mental Health Parity Compliance Act, Murphy spoke broadly about the genesis of mental health conditions, from the shuttering of clinics decades prior to a culture of individualism and alienation.

“The people who control your economy are no longer your neighbors,” Murphy said to a roomful of Business Roundtable invitees. “The people who control social and economic power are so distant from you.”

Murphy offered as a partial legislative solution The National Strategy for Social Connection Act, a bill he has authored that would create an Office of Social Connection Policy. The office would advise the president on issues of loneliness and isolation, and develop strategies to improve social infrastructure and community engagement.

Ricketts, meanwhile, focused on measuring the scope of mental health conditions and the effectiveness of treatment. He endorsed the Improving Measurements for Loneliness and Isolation Act of 2023, a bill proposed by Nebraska House Republican Mike Flood, which seeks input from states on quantifying mental health and cost efficient care.

Ricketts, who joined the Senate last year, noted that as Nebraska governor he signed legislation to increase access for mental health services, including telehealth.

“A lot of people don’t want others to see their cars parked at the doctor’s office,” Ricketts said.

The Republican said that mental health is a bipartisan issue and lamented the lack of providers in Nebraska.

After Murphy and Ricketts, a trio of CEO’s spoke about addressing mental health among their employees. The panel did not directly tackle the employer’s share of coverage costs. But they addressed cost-effective ways of addressing mental health.

For example, Julie Sweet, the chair and CEO of Accenture, and Blake Moret, chair and CEO of Rockwell Automation, both mentioned partnerships with Calm, a company that makes an app featuring guided meditation and sleep stories. Moret said that his company is seeking to integrate additional apps to help with mental health and well-being.

Sweet, whose international professional services company reports 774,000 employees, said her business has “created a framework that said very simply that if someone works at Accenture, they should feel better off.”

To ensure this, the company has trained 22,000 “mental health allies” across its workforce, Sweet said. Also, Accenture engages employees by asking over the company’s chat platform if they have a best friend at work.

One issue raised is whether employees know they can access mental health services. Wayne Peacock, CEO of USAA, said that following the 2020 suicide of an employee, the company has been proactive in getting its workers to talk about mental health.

“Today, more and more of our teammates are willing to say, ‘Hey, I’ve got a problem,’” Peacock said.

“About 55% of our employees are aware we have mental health services,” Peacock said.

He estimated that 20% of employees this year have taken advantage of the company’s free mental health counseling.

Recently, some behavioral health industry insiders have touted the increasingly prominent role that employers and employee assistance programs (EAPs) are playing.

Robert Poznanovich, chief business growth officer at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, previously told Behavioral Health Business that 2024 would usher in the year of employers sponsoring more substance use disorder (SUD) programs.

“What I’m seeing with employers, payers and benefit consultants and brokers is they’re creating some form of steerage and resources, and bringing together the ecosystem of their solutions together to help steer patients towards legitimate providers who provide levels of care that complement the other components of their ecosystem with health care,” he told BHB.

In a 2023 survey examining employer-sponsored behavioral health trends, 77% of surveyed employers said they planned to focus on improving mental health access in 2024.

Additionally, 63% of those employers said they expected to work with their health plan and other vendors to expand their mental health access in 2024.

Mental health’s staying power as a central political and economic subject was on display this week