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If chronic disease drives 75%+ of our national healthcare expense, how could high deductibles have any positive impact on health/disease outcomes? Additionally, since such a small percentage of members drive the vast majority of high cost (5% spend 50%+ of all plan assets-both public & commercial) AND 75%+ of members spend less than $500 annually— how can high deductible plans impact cost?
I strongly think these plans are negative to health in they prevent disease discovery at early stages and prevent disease mitigation! One last thought. Why are on-site clinics, featuring no deductibles, no copays and 0 cost for generic drugs producing plan savings?
You raise some good questions Dan. If these plans do not screen for diabetes or cancer etc, how is that helpful? It is basically up to the individual to do these things out of pocket. I think we are going to see a lot of these Doc in a box centers around the country being substituted for the Emergency Rooms that are so expensive. I also see more people dying because the quality of medical care offered will not uncover serious conditions because it won’t be sophisticated enough.
Welcome to the 3rd world.
It is truly a tricky balancing act. The part of the ACA that provides for preventive screenings and immunizations at no cost to the member is incredibly valuable to the health and well being of members, especially in a high deductible health plan – so a member can get screenings for these types of diseases (cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes etc) at no cost.
A real HSA-qualified HDHP (high deductible health plan) can be a good way to go, especially if the employer provides some funding for the HSA bank account for their employees. Often times the deductible and total out of pocket maximum may be LESS than on a traditional insurance plan, so if a member has a major health expense, their total out of pocket is less. If the employer is needing to drastically cut costs, this might be a better fit than say a traditional insurance plan with a high deductible ($3,000 or $4,000 or more deductible, then an additional $5,000 or more coinsurance maximum — that is a much greater out of pocket cost to the member than a $1,500 deductible HSA-qualified HDHP with a $3,000 or $4,000 out of pocket maximum which includes the deductible). But the health plan offerings need to be carefully evaluated and decided on by agents and employers.
Even being in the health insurance industry, I still think a single payor system is the way to go! Bring on the thumb down ratings ;)
I was liking your post DS singing the merit of High Deductible plans and HSA’s until you got to the last sentence. You are goofy to think that the single payer government plan would be better for America. Government in all forms is the most corrupt, wasteful and expensive that one can believe. Everytime Obamacare is scored, it doubles in cost. How can you possibly believe that it is the way to go.
Um, no. Medicare and the VA health system are government-run single payor systems that run cheaper than the private market. They just do. Belief that government is always bad, as comforting as that might be for some, just doesn’t hold water in this case. The fraud and financial abuse in these systems come from crooked docs and other providers, but the Blues and the insurance companies have to deal with these same crooks.
I agree that there are many crooked healthcare vendors, clinics, hospitals and doctors trying to rip off the system. I believe the companies have done a good job through their PPO networks to keep the rip offs from happening. Sometimes a hospital will bill enormous amounts and the company will then trim it way back due to contracts they have for procedures, rates etc. It is generally about 1/5th what was originally billed. Medicare, Social Security get ripped off every day of the week with little fraud investigation. Some have estimated fraud accounts for up to $100 Billion each year. Imagine how much we would save each year if the perpetrators were caught and prosecuted.
The problem is the motivation. Private insurers #1 motivation is to make a profit for thier shareholders. TAKE THE PROFIT MOTIVE OUT OF HEALTH INSURANCE!
The inherent problem is that funding of healthcare through an “insurance” mechanism is wholly-inappropriate; It’s simply not ethical to strive to make an underwriting profit off of people’s bodily infirmities and suffering. As for self-insured entities, neither is it ethical to push high-deductible plans on employees as a means of cost-shifting; that’s like being ill and having to buy a car to drive to a hospital for urgent care but without there being any price stickers in the window. We are squandering several hundred billion dollars on healthcare each year on transactional expenses that would be avoided if we just adopted the same single-payer system that the rest of the world has embraced.
Help me understand how the single payer system is the best approach. Europe is a shambles, Great Britain has cut their Healthcare system in half and it is still bankrupt, Canada’s doesn’t work very well and has rationed care where people wait for a year to get surgery, that is if they live that long. Our government is terribly wasteful and inefficient and somehow we are supposed to trust them with Healthcare? Do you want bureaucrats making life and health decisions on you or do you want you and your doctor making those decisions?
“Canada’s doesn’t work very well and has rationed care where people wait for a year to get surgery, that is if they live that long.”
Do you know that for a fact, or is that just what your talking heads are telling you? From what I’ve researched, there may be waits on elective procedures (ex. a knee replacement) but I really doubt if someone has a life-threatening condition and needed a surgery (ex. heart bypass) that they would be stuck waiting so long they die before the get the surgery. Let’s find some examples and see!
Even 20 years ago there was research about how a single payor system like Canada’s would be a good roadmap to model a single payor system in the US after, to help contain healthcare costs in the US: http://archive.gao.gov/d20t9/144039.pdf
Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
OTTAWA–Danny Williams’ decision to head south for heart surgery has sparked a furious debate on both sides of the border.
The premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, a former lawyer and millionaire businessman, left Monday for an unspecified cardiac surgical procedure at an undisclosed U.S. hospital. The move raised questions about whether he could have the operation in Canada.
Conservative Senator Wilbert Keon, a retired heart surgeon and professor emeritus at University of Ottawa, said Newfoundland does not have the special pumps and post-op technical support to allow all advanced complicated procedures to be performed there.
Nevertheless, Keon added, “I can’t imagine anything that couldn’t be done in Canada that is done in America.”
He said “virtually all” complicated heart surgery can be done at Ottawa’s Heart Institute and in Toronto, Montreal and Edmonton.
The reaction was loud and scornful south of the border, where health-care reform has conservatives fired up and ready to poke holes in the Canadian system.
“Canada: The Land of Health Care So Awesome That Its Politicians Undergo Surgery in the United States,” The American Pundit wrote sarcastically.
“Canada keeps its costs down, in part, by neglecting the expensive business of advanced specialty care knowing that the U.S. is next door to help,” wrote a commenter identified as Matt in a USpoliticsonline forum.
Williams’ decision sparked questions on the airwaves and on the Internet all day.
Did the premier, known as Danny Millions, have, and spurn, the option of having the heart surgery in Canada? If the procedure could be done in Canada, would he have had to wait long for it? Did he fear a public perception of jumping a queue, or simply chose a ritzier health-care setting that he could afford and would grant him swift care and privacy?
Deputy Premier Kathy Dunderdale said Williams is “more than prepared” to answer all questions “once he recovers.”
Williams had consulted “a number of medical experts” over several weeks, said Dunderdale.
“It was never offered to him as an option to have this procedure done in the province,” she told reporters in St. John’s. She would not specify whether the procedure was available elsewhere in Canada, nor how the U.S. hospital bill would be paid.
Williams’ recovery is expected to take from three to 12 weeks.
Keon suggested there may be an “odd occasion where some novel operative procedure arises in America through research that has not been implemented at that point in time in Canada.”
But he said Canadian heart care is “frequently ahead” of the U.S.
The Cardiac Care Network of Ontario classifies heart patients for care on three bases: “emergent – you’re done right away,” “urgent – you’re done in a few days” or “elective – you may have to wait for a while, because you’re not at any significant risk.”
“I hate to speculate … but the situation does arise where somebody who is wealthy wants to be done in luxurious surroundings and wants to be done right away,” Keon said.
“They will not be able to get it in 2014 if this bill is allowed to stand.”
Please do show me what part of the ACA will eliminate healthcare for Americans. Because I don’t know what part of this you could possible think will do this.
And as the article Captain Planet posts below indicates, in Canada at least relative to cardiac care in Ontario:
“The Cardiac Care Network of Ontario classifies heart patients for care on three bases: “emergent – you’re done right away,” “urgent – you’re done in a few days” or “elective – you may have to wait for a while, because you’re not at any significant risk.””
That doesn’t sound like a system that will let people die.
My response to “Common Sense” is that my common sense comments stand.