Behind the Slow Growth of Employer-Based Consumer-Driven Health Plans
December 2006 - Center for Studying Health System Change
This Issue Brief from the Center for Studying Health System Change presents a number of short articles on these topics as well as source information:
- Do Consumers Want to Direct Their Health Care?
- Many CDHP Enrollees Lack a Choice of Plans
- Where are the Savings?
- When One Plan Type is Offered: CDHP vs. Traditional Plans
- Implications
Daniel Weintraub: One company finds a way to control health costs
December 21, 2006- The Sacramento Bee
Safeway, the Pleasanton-based grocery store chain, seems to have found a way to do something that has eluded almost everyone else: control its health care costs.
Safeway, which runs on a slim, single-digit profit margin, found that it was paying $1 billion a year for health care for its 200,000 employees -- more than its shareholders were making off the company's grocery business.
Explaining the explanation of benefits
December 17, 2006 - MarketWatch
Changes could make health-care paperwork easier to decode because each company has its own EOB language and layout, consumers struggle to make sense of insurance terminology and cost breakdowns. Part of EOBs' incomprehensibility is they come from a providers' point of view as to who gets what share of the money, said Michael Wroblewski, project director for consumer education for Consumers Union in Yonkers, N.Y.
"Nobody does it from the consumers' point of view on a consistent basis," he said. "To get it changed, it seems to me the employers need to say 'Hey, you need to fix this.'"
Wyden Announces Universal Health Coverage Proposal: "The Healthy Americans Act"
January 5, 2007 - Hewitt
On December 13, 2006, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) announced his plan to introduce a bill ("The Healthy Americans Act") that would create a centrally financed health care system with universal health care coverage delivered through private health plans.
The proposal has received some positive support from both organized labor and employers. While it is doubtful that comprehensive health reform will become law in the current Congress, it is likely to be widely discussed in Congress and in the 2008 presidential campaign, setting the stage for possible reform at a later date.
