Consumer-driven health plans
- What are the pros and cons of Consumer Driven Health Plans? Provide detailed examples where appropriate.
- Do you believe consumer-driven health plans are here to stay, and what are the plans for the future?
Week 2 Discussion: Consumer-driven health plans
Consumer-driven health plans (CDHPs) include health insurance plans using high deductibles associated with tax-advantaged accounts of personal health expenditures. CDHPs assist members with the management and prevention of chronic diseases. The pretext money is set aside to make payments for qualified medical expenses that are uncovered by the health plan. This scheme also saves costs for beneficiaries and payers. These plans have attained success at their primary goal of decreasing the spending of employers on healthcare. These schemes also save healthy employees money as they do not need to spend immensely on their premiums and do not make use of care. For example, for people having low incomes and suffering from high blood pressure, CDHPs provide better regulation of blood pressure. Also, some disadvantages include greater co-pay, deductibles, and so on. Co-pays increase if people are planning to visit the doctors more. Repeated utilization might also result in higher expenses when the members can make higher payments and avoid co-pays. This aspect depends on trade-offs relying on anticipated care needs and members find it helpful to navigate such options (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, 2022).
Consumer-driven health plans have the potential of staying as they provide benefits. Both employers and employees are exempted from unnecessary expenses and they are more like to attain alternate options of treatment and generic medication versions. Despite their cons, CDHPs contribute to the discerning of employees with their choices of healthcare (Ferguson et al. 2021). These schemes are providing power to the employees’ hands. Although these plans have some flaws, they can remain serviceable if flaws are corrected. Employees ought to be educated regarding the differences between necessary and unnecessary care to gain appropriate information about the quality and cost of local care. Thereby, CDHPs are having the potential to become the new normal in the future years.
References
Ferguson, W., White, B. S., McNair, J., Miller, C., Wang, B., & Coustasse, A. (2021). Potential savings from consumer-driven health plans. International Journal of Healthcare Management, 14(4), 1457-1462. Retrieved from: https://mds.marshall.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1238&context=mgmt_faculty
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, 2022, consumer-directed health care, retrieved from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361064/ [Retrieved on: 15.3.2022]
