More big firms want Web-based health plans

A survey predicts that during the next two years, 40% of large employers will offer such coverage.

By Tyler Chin, AMNews staff. Dec. 23/30, 2002.

The number of large employers offering Web-based, consumer-directed health plans to their employees will quadruple next year, according to a survey by Forrester Research.

Based on a survey of 25 large companies with more than 1,000 employees each, 16% of large employers will offer Web-based health plans to employees in 2003. This is up from 4% in 2002, according to estimates by the Cambridge, Mass.-based consulting firm. That number will rise to 40% in 2004, the firm said.

Large employers are interested in offering Web-based plans because they are looking for ways to lower health care costs, said Bradford J. Holmes, the firm's research director.

Web-based plans let patients contribute a certain amount toward their health care costs and control how they spend money in their personal health care spending accounts.

The plans also offer patients access to cost data because patients are more likely to make more cost-conscious health care buying decisions if they know -- and are responsible for paying -- the actual cost of health care out of their pockets, Holmes said.

Most large employers are looking to offer the Web-based products through their primary commercial insurers, he said.

Until recently, most Web-based plans -- the development of which the AMA supports -- were being offered by startups rather than commercial insurers. [...]