Over at First Horizon Msaver’s Broker Portal - The HSAFocalPoint - there are some interesting results of a recent survey conducted by Buck Consultants, Inc - showing that employers and employees preferred Health Savings Accounts over HRA’s.

From the site:

According to a story published today by By Rupal Parekh  in Business Insurance, a survey — conducted in April by human resource and benefits consulting firm Buck Consultants Inc. — shows that Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) not only do a better job of containing health care costs than do health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs), but they are also more popular among employees.

According to the survey, 52% of respondents said they believe that HSAs are favored more by employees, and nearly half—46%—of respondents said they believe that HSAs can control health care costs more effectively than HRAs

Of course, that’s something we already knew - but it’s good to have some more empirical evidence to back it up.

Read the whole post here. 

A recent article by John Torinus of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel outlines a recent debate between two Harvard business professors concerning the role of consumer driven healthcare in revolutionizing our straining health care industry.

Here are some highlights:

Herzlinger trusts the marketplace and the consumer to drive the reform.

She believes that, if each person takes charge as a consumer of health care, the providers will either change to meet their needs or go out of business.

I’m with Herzlinger. Only when a customer - a word that doctors, clinics and hospitals seldom use - threatens to move the business does a vendor truly change its behavior.

Her opponent is of the school of thinking that says the health care industry will have to fix itself, something that I believe the desire for profit margins and shareholder value won’t allow to happen.

Thankfully, with health savings accounts -  consumers will have the power to force change.  By being able to shop around for basic procedures, prices will begin to drop, and the consumers will be able to take hold of their own health care destiny.