Consumer-driven health plans – The Health Care Blog

The Smarter Healthcare Consumer Myth

Mar 20, 2013• 16

By John S. Wilson

If consumers could review and shop for health care coverage as easily as they do television sets, costs would decline and we wouldn’t have as large a health care crisis. At least that’s what some folks would lead us to believe. But the picture isn’t that clear.

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal reports how companies are using private health insurance exchanges to lower costs and give employees more flexibility. The exchanges are similar in nature to those mandated by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare)—the difference being a private company is overseeing the exchange and not the federal government or states. Employees are able to log on to a site, review coverage plans with different benefits and a range of deductibles, and choose what works best for their budget.

A consultant running one such exchange was enthusiastic about its progress thus far. “When people are spending their own money, they tend to be more consumeristic,” Ken Sperling, national health exchange strategy leader for Aon Hewitt, a unit of AON Plc, told the Journal. (Aon itself, as well as Sears Holdings Inc. and Darden Restaurants are using a new Aon run exchange.) Benefits consultants Mercer (part of Marsh & McLennan Cos.) and Buck (part of Xerox) are rolling out similar private exchanges.

There’s no doubt that consumers are more astute, on average, regarding price for benefit when directly paying for goods and services.

A Tale of Two Systems

Aug 27, 2012• 7

By David Dranove

It was the worst of systems. It was the worst of systems.

For decades, policy analysts have debated how we to strike a proper balance among access, quality and cost in our healthcare system. This debate has missed a crucial point: we do not have one healthcare system, we have two. And both are broken. Fortunately, if we fix one the other may heal itself.

The first system is the one that we encounter when we seek treatment for an illness. This system defines how much we pay out of pocket, which depends which providers we seek and what treatments they deliver. This system also defines how much our providers are paid, including rewards for exceptional quality and penalties for substandard quality. Historically, patients have relied on their physicians to guide them through the complexities of this system. In recent years, supporters of consumer-driven healthcare have argued for a bigger role for patients. They make the important point that patients will never make a serious effort to balance access and quality against cost unless they are responsible for all three.

Why Consumer-Driven Health Care Will Fail

Mar 7, 2011• 85

By DAVIS LIU, MD

The creation of consumer-driven health plans (CDHPs), health insurance policies with high deductibles linked to a savings option and with more financial responsibility shouldered by patients and employees and less by employers, was completely inevitable. The American public likes to have everything, whether consumer electronics or other services, as cheap as possible. With escalating health care expenses rising far more rapidly than wages or inflation, it’s not surprising employers needed a way to manage this increasingly costly business expense.

In the past, companies faced a similar dilemma. It wasn’t about medical costs, but managing increasingly expensive retirement and pension plan obligations. Years ago, companies moved from these defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans like 401(k)s. After all, much like health care, the reasoning by many was that employees were best able to manage retirement planning because they would have far more financial incentive, responsibility, and self-motivation to make the right choices to ensure a successful outcome.

How did that assumption turn out anyway?

Disastrous according to a recent Wall Street Journal article titled Retiring Boomers Find 401(k) Plans Fall Short.

The median household headed by a person aged 60 to 62 with a 401(k) account has less than one-quarter of what is needed in that account to maintain its standard of living in retirement, according to data compiled by the Federal Reserve and analyzed by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College for The Wall Street Journal. Even counting Social Security and any pensions or other savings, most 401(k) participants appear to have insufficient savings. Data from other sources also show big gaps between savings and what people need, and the financial crisis has made things worse.Continue reading…