June 27, 2018
Bloomberg
looks at an important trend in health care coverage: the rise of employer-based
high-deductible plans that mean many patients and families simply can’t afford
to get sick.
Some
companies are now rethinking those policies, Bloomberg’s John Tozzi and Zachary Tracer report,
after realizing that their goal of reducing costs by getting patients to have
more “skin in the game” instead led workers to delay or forgo care, including
medications. Patients didn’t become “better” health-care consumers. They simply
cut back on what they thought they couldn’t afford — potentially driving up
costs in the long run.
“High-deductible
plans do reduce health-care costs, but they don't seem to be doing it in smart
ways,” said Neeraj Sood, director of research at the Leonard D. Schaeffer
Center for Health Policy and Economics at the University of Southern
California.
The trend: Nearly
40 percent of large employers offer only high-deductible plans, up from 7
percent in 2009, according to a survey by the National Business Group on Health
cited by Bloomberg. And half of all covered workers now have a deductible of at
least $1,000 for an individual, up from 34 percent in 2012 and 22 percent in
2009, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Nearly one in four
covered workers has a deductible of $2,000 or more.
The key
quote: “Why did we design a health plan that has the ability to
deliver a $1,000 surprise to employees?” Shawn Leavitt, a senior human
resources executive at Comcast, said at a recent conference, according to
Bloomberg. “That’s kind of stupid.”
Why it
matters: As employers move away from simply shifting more and more costs
to their workers, Axios’ Sam Baker notes, they’re also paying
more attention to bringing down underlying health care prices.
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