Gift cards turn health care into stocking stuffer

Highmark's entry into the market is seen as either a sign of growth in consumer-directed health or patients' struggle to afford care.

By Emily Berry, AMNews staff. Nov. 26, 2007.

Your patients may soon come for post-holiday visits not wearing new reindeer sweaters, but carrying gift cards that can help pay your fees.

Pittsburgh-based insurer Highmark says it has made giving the gift of good health possible with the introduction of its Healthcare Gift Card. While hospitals and some practices already are in the gift-card market, analysts consider Highmark's entry a watershed moment for the health care and gift card industries. Highmark is believed to be the first to issue a gift card that can be used nationally while also intended mostly for everyday health expenses.

Analysts agree this trend is reflective of patients shouldering more financial responsibility for their health care. Where they disagree is whether health gift cards are a positive or negative development.

"It speaks to the fact that the current reimbursement system and insurance system is inadequate, that there's a market for these cards," said Mark Rukavina, executive director of the Access Project, a Boston-based group that promotes access to health care. "If we have insurance that was more comprehensive and paid more of the bills, then the need for a card like this wouldn't be as great."

But Kim Bellard, Highmark's vice president for e-marketing and consumer relationship management, said the card is one more way health care is becoming more consumer-oriented.

"Consumers are paying for more health care expenses out of their own pockets, whether higher deductibles and co-pays or people without insurance, or things more people are choosing to buy, like LASIK or cosmetic dentistry," he said. "People are more likely to either need to or want to look at health care as another consumer good, and they want more of the conveniences they can buy other retail items with."