Health savings accounts and other consumer-directed insurance products can help lower health care utilization and encourage better health behaviors, according to an industry expert.
Consumers begin to recognize that their behaviors can lead to a health outcome that might cost them money in the long run, said Doug Kronenberg, chief strategy officer for Lumenos, an Alexandria, Va.-based company that sells health savings accounts (HSAs). And so they begin to think about changing their behavior, he said.
When an employer or insurer combines an HSA with a program that also shows consumers the financial benefits of changing their behavior and offers support tools, consumers really become engaged in their health care, Mr. Kronenberg said during a teleconference sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
HSAs were authorized under the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 and are portable accounts that consumers can use to pay for certain qualified medical expenses. The accounts are generally offered in conjunction with a high-deductible insurance plan, and both consumers and employers can contribute.
HSAs and similar accounts, such as health reimbursement accounts, can also create big savings for employers, Mr. Kronenberg said. With these types of plans, consumers tend to see the money as their own, and utilization of health care services typically drops.
But Mila Kofman, J.D., assistant research professor at the Health Policy Institute at Georgetown University, Washington, said that HSAs coupled with high deductible plans are just shifting the cost burden for health care from the insurer and the employer to the consumer.
And one of the possible pitfalls of the plans is that consumers who are facing deductibles of $1,000 or more each year will simply forego needed medical care.