Tag: "consumer driven health care"

How Long Should You Have to Wait to See a Doctor?

dogvetwait

How long should you have to wait to see a doctor? Why not just call a doctor?

The patient in the photo was able to get a same-day appointment within 15 minutes of the request and was seen within 10 minutes after arriving. But that is an exception in the United States. A recent article in the American Journal of Managed Care estimated the average physician visit takes two hours (121 minutes). That includes travel time (37 minutes), waiting time (about an hour) and treatment time (10 to 20 minutes). Of course, that’s once you get an appointment.

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Nov 03, 2016 | 8 comments | by

What Holds Back Consumer-Driven Health Plans?

health-insuranceA previous entry discussed new evidence that so-called consumer-driven health plans (CDHPs) reduce health spending one eighth among employer-sponsored group plans run by national health plans.

CHDPs are defined as High-Deductible Health Plans coupled with Health Savings Accounts or Health Reimbursement Arrangements). These plans became available in 2005. However, they only appear to cover a little over one quarter of employed people or their dependents who are enrolled in their benefits.

The case for CDHPs is that consumers (patients) will spend their health dollars more prudently than insurers or employers will. So: How can such a small proportion of people be enrolled in CDHPs after over a decade of evidence supporting the case that they cut the rate of growth of health spending?

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Oct 20, 2016 | 54 comments | by

EpiPen Maker Lobbied U.S. Preventive Services Task Force

According to a report in the Washington Examiner, drug maker Mylan lobbied the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force to require insurers to pay the full price of EpiPens by deeming the drug delivery device a preventative measure. Under the Affordable Care Act, health plans must cover preventive services 100% without cost-sharing regardless of whether deductibles have been met. EpiPens are used by people with severe allergies who go into anaphylactic shock.  They are not used to prevent anaphylaxis, they treat the symptoms once it occurs. For example, under ACA regulations, a flu shot is a preventive medicine. Once you have the flu, seeing your doctor for Tamiflu would be a treatment, not a prevention.

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Oct 13, 2016 | 3 comments | by

Is Obamacare’s Failure Intentional, to Promote Medicaid-for-All?

A recent commentary in the Wall Street Journal announced, “Obamacare’s meltdown has arrived.” Health insurance premiums all over the country have skyrocketed. Numerous insurers have pulled out of state and federal exchange marketplaces. Many consumers have only one choice of health insurer and can choose from only a couple different plans. State health insurance CO-OPs have been falling like dominos and the program is now all but defunct.

None of this should have come as a surprise. Over the years I’ve heard conspiracy theories that Obamacare was designed to fail to nudge a reluctant nation one step closer to a single-payer system of socialized medicine. Think of this as Medicaid-for-All.

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Oct 11, 2016 | 18 comments | by

Consumer-Driven Health Plans Reduce Health Spending One Eighth

credit-card-2The Health Care Cost Institute has released its analysis of claims data for the years 2010 through 2014, examining consumer-driven health plans (CDHPs, which HCCI defines as High-Deductible Health Plans coupled with Health Savings Accounts or Health Reimbursement Arrangements). HCCI examines a database of claims submitted by Aetna, Humana, Kaiser Permanente, and UnitedHealthcare for their employer-sponsored group plans.

CDHPs shift payment from third-party bureaucracies (that is, insurers) back to patients directly. The results continue to impress:

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Oct 07, 2016 | 2 comments | by

Is Pet Health As Dysfunctional as Human Health Care?

clemvet1Health policy analysts have long blamed the inefficiencies that befall the U.S. health care system to our over-reliance on third party payment. About 89 percent of all medical care is paid for by third parties — either employer-sponsored health plans, Medicare, Medicaid or individual medical insurance. Indeed, about 90 percent of the U.S. population have some type of health coverage. Thus, one could make a valid argument that medical markets devoid of insurance should function more like normal consumer markets. For instance, there is significant evidence that cosmetic medicine and corrective eye surgery both experience lower price inflation than medical care. These services are rarely covered by insurance. Another notable medical market that does not rely on insurance is veterinary medicine.

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Oct 03, 2016 | 8 comments | by

Premiums For Employer-Based Family Health Insurance Up One Fifth Since Obamacare

The Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research Educational Trust has released its 2016 Employer Health Benefits Survey. The survey covers almost 1,900 private and public (non-federal) employers. The results show Obamacare has not reduced premiums, which have increased by one fifth for family plans since 2011.

The good news is the proportion of beneficiaries with “High-Deductible Health Plans with a Savings Option” (HDHP/SOs) has increased from 20 percent to 29 percent in two years. Only four percent of covered worker were in such plans in 2006, and 17 percent in 2011. (In 2015, a HDHP had to have a minimum deductible of $1,300 for single coverage and $2,600 for family. The “Savings Option” would be a Health Savings Account or Health Reimbursement Arrangement.)

These plans were first available in 2005, and correspond with an immediate slowdown in the rate of growth of employer-based benefits. In real terms (adjusted for changes in the Consumer Price Index), dropped from double digits in the early 2000s to single digits after 2005 and bottoming out at an increase in premium of just two percent in 2009. There was an immediate jump of 11 percent in 2011, Obamacare’s first year. Since then, both High Deductible Health Plans and the burden of Obamacare have continued to grow. This struggle has resulted in mid-single digit premium growth.

See Figure I below the fold:

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Sep 23, 2016 | 10 comments | by

Consumer Driven Health Care Gets Messy: That’s the Good News

According to a new health benefits survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, premiums for employer coverage rose only about 3% in 2016. The low increase was due to rising deductibles. A slight majority (51%) of workers have a deductible of $1,000 or more. Two-thirds of workers in small firms do, while slightly less than half of large firm workers (45%) are covered by $1,000 or higher deductible.  About 10 years ago, only 4% of workers were enrolled in a high-deductible plan with a savings component. Now, nearly one-third are. [See the figure.]

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Sep 15, 2016 | 9 comments | by

The “Right to Shop” For Health Care

credit-card-2Anyone who has undergone a medical procedure knows it is very difficult to figure out how much an insured patient will pay out-of-pocket. It is often not clarified for months after the procedure, after a flurry of incomprehensible paperwork from insurers, doctors, labs, et cetera, has landed in the patient’s mailbox.

(Personal aside: A couple of years ago, my health insurer encouraged me to go paperless, and I signed up for electronic messages about claims. It was so confusing, I went back to paper after a few months. At least you can scrunch up a letter and throw it across the room with an anguished scream, which you don’t want to do with your computer.)

This problem has led to a bunch of state laws attempting to impose “price transparency” on medical providers. As discussed previously, they do not work, because relationships between insurers and providers inhibit transparency. Medical providers “customers” are insurers, which pay most of their claims, not patients. Further, the real problem with medical prices is not that they are opaque, but that they are not formed in a normal market process. Instead, they are negotiated by third-party bureaucracies.

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Aug 17, 2016 | 63 comments | by

A Bipartisan “Yes” On A Health Care Tax Credit

health-insurance(A version of this Health Alert was published by RealClearHealth.)

Ready for some good news on health reform? Both the presumptive Democratic candidate for President and the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives agree people should be able to spend more money directly on medical care without insurance companies meddling.

Both sides would be shocked to have their respective health reforms described as sharing any common ground. However, identifying this common ground might be necessary if either side wants to fix the worst aspects of Obamacare.

If Republican politicians in Congress want to give people any relief from the burden of Obamacare, they need to be prepared for the possibility they will have to deal with Hillary Clinton’s White House next year.

Speaker Ryan’s recently released Better Way health reform plan would offer a refundable tax credit for health care, to anyone who does not have employer-based health benefits. This tax credit would increase with age, but be available regardless of income. It would be a fixed-dollar amount for each age bracket. This is superior to Obamacare for at least two reasons.

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Jul 13, 2016 | 30 comments | by
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