Consumer and Provider Costs
The federal policy and service in attempts to ensure that all citizens have access to affordable healthcare reforms were made in the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Among them was calling on people to take health insurance covers to increase the utilization of health care services. With the rising increase in demand for insurance, high-deductible insurance policies are being adopted by insurers. A high deductible insurance plan is one where an individual is expected to pay all medical costs out of pocket until they hit their deductible. That is when the insurance kicks in to cover their bills. The high deductible insurance plans are tailored to be consumer-driven and controlled. In this paper, will assess the effect of federal health care policy which prompted the rise of this high deductible insurance plans and how consumers who have adopted this plan have been impacted in terms of healthcare utilization and what is the cost to consumers.
High deductible health plans (HDHP) have low monthly premiums, and therefore using this plan helps the consumers keep more of their paycheck monthly. The ACA allows people with HDHPs to be eligible to having Health saving accounts, which make access to healthcare services to consumers cheaper because the account money for healthcare is moved around tax-free when paying for qualified assistance. HDHPs allow people to access a wide range of services because they can get control of how they want to spend their insurance funds. The insurers also do not have to reimburse HDHP funds, making the plan less costly to the providers.
When HDHP is tagged to a health-saving account, money not used in a year is rolled over to the next year; this has helped significantly reduce the consumption of services when necessary. As much as the plan is cost-saving, it becomes costly for people with chronic illnesses because of regular specialist visits, which at times require out of pocket cash because some services are not qualifying to be catered for by the plan. In attempts by people with the plans to save more money, they resort to seeking lower quality healthcare services at lower prices, and this is not what the ACA intentions were; the idea was to work helping people access quality services. The HDHPs are costly to low-income consumers because the expectation to pay out of pocket until the deductible is met becomes a burden, but the plan works well for high-income people.
In conclusion, the federal health policies that prompted the adoption of HDHPs significantly improved the utilization of health care services by reducing costs incurred by consumers to a certain extent, such as through low monthly premiums. However, the plan still comes as a burden to chronically ill patients and people with low incomes. Still, it is safe to say the program is efficient in helping with federal health reforms that intend to see that patients get affordable healthcare services.
Reference
Agarwal, R., Mazurenko, O., & Menachemi, N. (2017). High-deductible health plans reduce health care cost and utilization, including the use of needed preventive services. Health Affairs, 36(10), 1762-1768.
Sinaiko, A. D., Mehrotra, A., & Sood, N. (2016). Cost-sharing obligations, high-deductible health plan growth, and shopping for health care: enrollees with skin in the game. JAMA internal medicine, 176(3), 395-397.
White, L. (2017). High-Deductible Health Plans. Studies, 14, 18-22.