Tuesday, August 15, 2006
BestWire Services - Aug. 9: Health insurance agents and brokers believe the trend toward consumer-driven health care is here to stay, but insurers will need to offer more integrated products and more advanced online tools if they hope to entice employers to offer the products, a new survey suggests.According to the National Association of Health Underwriters' annual buying trends survey of its members, 41% of health insurance brokers report their employer clients "overwhelmingly" rate consumer-directed plans as the best option to control medical costs. But while 66% of employers would consider CDHC plans as either a primary or optional benefit coverage, just 29% currently plan to offer such plans in the coming year. "Some employers are concerned that some of their employees may not understand (the plans), and there may not be adequate tools available to help them get the quality and cost information they need to make informed decisions," said Janet Trautwein, NAHU's chief executive officer. Trautwein noted that most plan providers are offering at least the same tools for CDHC plans that they offer for more traditional plan structures. But the design of consumer-directed plans, which typically feature higher deductibles coupled with tax-advantaged health savings accounts or health reimbursement accounts, demand that carriers offer more detailed metrics about the quality of health-care providers and more disclosure about costs. "What we're talking about here is shopping a deductible, and what the goal would be is for consumers to have some behavioral change that would impact the larger picture and the bigger costs," Trautwein said.The brokers, surveyed on behalf of NAHU by ChapterHouse LLC, also said employers themselves would need to change how they approach consumer-directed plans if those plans are to continue growing at the high-level seen in 2004 and 2005. According to the survey, when employees are offered a choice between a traditional plan and a CDHC plan, only one in five will choose the consumer-directed plan, suggesting that employers need to "sweeten the pot" by making greater contributions into HSAs and HRAs. Currently, only 16% of employers contribute more than 100% of their premium savings for consumer-directed plans into participants' savings accounts, while 35% "take money off the table" by spending less overall on consumer-directed plans than on traditional plans. According to ChapterHouse, most brokers participating in the survey were located in urban markets and work primarily with small-group cases in the two-to-50 employee size band. Responses came in from all regions of the country and roughly mirrored the current distribution of U.S. employers.
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@ 2:07 PM
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