I’m happy to announce that I’m going to be Interview Craig Keohan - one of the Nation’s leaders in the consumer driven health care movement. I’ll publish this on Monday probably - I’m going to sit down with him to talk on Friday morning.
Stay Tuned!
According to the Govermental Accountability Office, the number of people purchasing high deductible health care plans nearly double from January 2005 to January 2006.
From the Houston Chronicle Article:
The number of people purchasing high-deductible plans jumped from about 3 million in January 2005 to as much as 6 million by January 2006, the Government Accountability Office said Tuesday.
Individuals purchasing such policies usually pay lower monthly premiums because they agree to bear a greater share of the cost of their health care. The policies are often coupled with health savings accounts, which allow consumers to set aside money tax free, and they can then use that money to pay for medical expenses not picked up by the insurer or to save it for retirement.
The policies paired with health savings accounts must have a minimum deductible of $1,050 for single coverage and $2,100 for family coverage. The Bush administration has aggressively pushed to make such accounts more popular by calling for further tax breaks for those who open them.
This is just more evidence that, despite the critics of HSA/HDHP plans - American consumers are choosing the health plans that work best for them.
See Also:
Health Savings Account Enrollment Triples
Hat Tip: MSaver HSA Agent Portal
Technorati Tags: Consumer Driven Health Care, High Deductible Health Plans, Health Savings Accounts
Martin over at The HSA Focal Point recently attended the Consumer Driven Health Care Conference in San Francisco - and had some interesting paralells to share regarding the health care industry and the automotive industry:
Herzlinger said that consumer driven industries need three components: 1) innovative entrepreneurs like Henry Ford, 2) good marketers like Alfred P. Sloan and 3) information providers like J.D. Powers.
She said that Henry Ford discovered how to make cars cheaply, Alfred Sloan realized that the public wanted choices, and J.D. Powers provided the information needed to evaluate cost and quality.
Those are some very interesting points - and I have to say that I greatly agree - this is definately the direction that the health care industry is headed - innovation and price transparancy are going to be of paramount importance in the coming years.
Technorati Tags: Consumer driven health care, health care, HSA’s, price transparency
Published today at TheHill.com, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) offers up his thoughts on the impending health care crisis, specificially the cost of frivilous lawsuits and rising insurance premiums. In keeping with the theme of this site, we won’t got too far into frivilous and excessive malpractice lawsuits - Santorum does that for us.
On the topic of rising insurance premiums - it’s no secret that we are approaching crisis mode. The rising costs of insurance will hopefully begin to be offset by increased adoption of HSA’s - which can help decrease your premiums, and keep more of your health care dollars under your control.
Technorati Tags: Politics, Rick Santorum, Health Care
The health care/insurance crisis continues to take shape, as a study being released today shows that the number of middle income Americans going without health insurance jumps:
Forty-one percent of adults with incomes between $20,000 and $40,000 a year did not have health insurance for at least part of 2005, up from 28 percent without coverage in 2001, according to the report by the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based health care policy foundation.
The article goes on to describe a number of issues, one being that a large percentage of people who are in medical debt HAD coverage at the time of their illness:
More than half of 4,350 people surveyed in the Commonwealth study said they had medical debt or bill problems. More than a third reported problems or delays in getting care due to costs. Nearly two-thirds of adults with problems paying medical bills said they or a family member was insured when they incurred the debt.
It seems to me that the folks who are pushing so hard against consumer driven health care don’t have all the facts straight - more high priced insurance that leaves consumers in debt doesn’t seem like the way to avert the impending crisis.
Technorati Tags: Health Care Crisis, High Insurance Cost, Medical Debt, Consumer Driven Health Care
From the Salt Lake City Tribune:
“The task force is really struggling, and it’s becoming more clear to me that this is more than a Utah problem. This is an American problem. We need to care more about the people and small-business owners struggling to afford health insurance and less about mega profits of the corporations in this country.”
While the bulk of the task force’s focus is on the business practices of Intermountain Healthcare - the impetus for this stems from the fact that health care costs for consumers and employers continue to rise dramatically, while insurance companies are posting billion dollar profits.
For example - while health insurance costs continue to cause employers to cancel medical coverage for their employees - Aetna posted a 31% increase in earnings per share over Q1 of last year.
This is why I don’t understand all the opposition to HSA’s from people who claim they are only for the “healthy and wealthy.” While they aren’t for everyone - if enough people adopted an HSA and high deductible health plan, it would not only help drive down the cost of health care, it could also help lower insurance premiums overall.
Technorati Tags: Health Care Crisis, Intermountain Health Care, Aetna, Insurance Company Profits