For too long, employers have outsourced management of their employees’ health care benefits to those with little incentive to improve value. In a departure from this norm, 20 major corporations earlier this month announced that they were joining forces to create the Health Transformation  Alliance (HTA) to help them take a much more active role in the health and health care of their employees and beneficiaries — some 4 million people. The HTA’s self-described goal is “to improve the way corporations provide health care benefits in an effort to create better health care outcomes for their employees” by aggregating its members’ purchasing power and using it to gain additional leverage with care providers.