By Scott MacStravic, WorldHealthCareBlog.org, Feb. 12, 2008
The current popularity of “Consumer-Directed Health Plans”, with high deductibles and spending accounts may be due simply to their clear cost-shifting effects and demonstrated effects on reducing health care/insurance spending. The idea is simple enough to be simplistic – give consumers more skin in the game, and they will not demand unnecessary or wasteful medical or hospital care, and they will take better care of their own health. Given the fact, well known to marketers for decades, that consumers do not rely on rationality for their behavior and purchase choices, the idea that that is all it takes is surely optimistic at best.
But there may also be a hidden agenda at work. Arguably, it has always been the case that prudent employers should want to recruit and hire the healthiest employees possible, even when the only hope was that such a practice would reduce sickness care costs. The problem has always been at least in two complications: 1) employees tend to get older, with their health declining, as they also become wiser and more valuable with experience and development; and 2) there are laws against discrimination based on age, for example, and even health conditions that qualify as disabilities.
Read more at http://www.worldhealthcareblog.org/2008/02/12/a-hidden-agenda-in-cdhps/
|
Features/Opinion 
