Consumer-driven health care: Bush, GOP back HSA expansion

Insurers and employers are increasingly moving toward plans that put patients in the driver's seat.

By Joel B. Finkelstein, AMNews staff. March 8, 2004.

Washington -- Eager to curb rapidly rising health spending, some lawmakers have embraced a trend already catching on in the private sector -- consumer-driven health plans.

Businesses large and small are looking for ways to preserve employee health benefits without breaking the bank. Many have latched onto the concept of consumer-driven health care, which shifts more of the responsibility for health-spending choices onto the patient.

"We see a 15% reduction in drug spending right out of the chute within five to six months and a 6% reduction in physician visits," said Mike Parkinson, MD, chief medical officer for Lumenos, an Alexandria, Va.-based health insurance company offering consumer-driven plans across the country.

"You know that 20% to 25% of doctor visits are unneeded; 30% to 35% of all health care is ineffective or inefficient. How better to get at [that waste] than front-loading the consumer who says I want to get the care I want when I want it and from whom I want it," he said.

Consumer awareness of price and quality information will drive competition among physicians seeking to offer the highest value services, Dr. Parkinson said. Many physicians like consumer-driven plans because they emphasize preventive and behavioral services that support doctor-prescribed treatments and make for healthier patients, he said.

While yearly reports suggest that consumer-driven health care may lower health costs, that research also suggests that savings are achieved through reductions in using necessary as well as unnecessary services.