Consumer Driven Plans

High-Deductible Plans Grow, but Not Everyone Should Get on Board
Excerpt:"In exchange for picking up a larger share of their own health care costs, employees pay lower insurance premiums and are allowed to use pretax dollars to pay out-of-pocket costs. But many consumers embracing the plans have discovered there are pitfalls aplenty, including out-of-pocket expenses they cannot afford."(New York Times; free registration required)

Health Reform Could Accelerate Shift to High-Deductible Plans
Excerpt:"[T]he myriad ways in which these high-deductible plans can be structured likely leave them well situated in the post-reform world, benefits consultants say. Along with the plans'flexible design, they also cite other reform-related changes as being influential, such as the new limitations on another type of account, the flexible spending account."(Workforce Management; free registration required)

High-Deductible Health-Insurance Plans Grow More Attractive to Employers
Excerpt:"High-deductible health plans and the health savings accounts (HSAs) that link to them are becoming a familiar fixture on the insurance landscape, even though they get mixed reviews from many consumers and health-policy experts."(The Washington Post; free registration required)

[Guidance Overview] 2011 Minimums and Maximums for Health Savings Accounts Plans and High-Deductible Health Plans Unchanged from 2010
Excerpt:"As in 2009 and 2010, individuals age 55 or over can contribute an additional $1,000 to their HSAs in 2011 and subsequent years."(The Segal Group, Inc.)

Health Savings Accounts and Health Reimbursement Arrangements: Assets, Account Balances, and Rollovers, 2006?2009 (PDF)
32 pages. Excerpt:"ASSET LEVELS GROWING: In 2009, there was $7.1 billion in consumer-driven health plans (CDHPs), which include health savings accounts (or HSAs) and health reimbursement arrangements (or HRAs), spread across 5 million accounts. This is up from 2006, when there were 1.2 million accounts with $835.4 million in assets, and 2008, when 4.2 million accounts held $5.7 billion in assets."(Employee Benefit Research Institute)

[Guidance Overview] The 2011 Limits for Health Savings Accounts and High-Deductible Health Plans (PDF)
Excerpt:"In Revenue Procedure 2010-22, the IRS provides the inflation-adjusted HSA contribution and HDHP minimum deductible and out-of-pocket limits for 2011. Under the cost-of-living adjustment and rounding rules of Internal Revenue Code Section 223, the 2011 amounts are unchanged from the amounts for 2010."(Buck Consultants)

Health Savings Account/High-Deductible Health Plans Coverage Survey Report (PDF)
Excerpt:"The number of people with HSA/HDHP coverage rose to 10 million in January 2010, up from 8 million in January 2009, and 6.1 million in January 2008. Between January 2009 and January 2010, the fastest growing market for HSA/HDHP products was large-group coverage, which rose by 33 percent, followed by small-group coverage, which grew by 22 percent."(America's Health Insurance Plans)

Health Savings Account/High-Deductible Health Plans Enrollment: Supplement to Report (PDF)
5 pages of slides. (America's Health Insurance Plans)

Employers Offer Decision Support and Incentives to Encourage Consumer-Driven Health Plan Use, According to Survey
Excerpt:"The survey found about half of small and mid-sized organizations and close to two-thirds of large organizations have adopted at least one CDHP or high-deductible health plans (HDHP). More than three-quarters (76%) of large employers (>5,000 employees) offer decision support tools to CDHP participants, and another 3% plan to do so within the next 12 months."(PLANSPONSOR.com)

Small Employers Lead Consumer-Directed Health Plan Adoption in 2009 (PDF)
2 pages. Excerpt:"Small employers were the major driver for the rise in CDHP enrollment in 2009, from 9% in 2008 to 15% in 2009. This increase was a direct result of smaller employees utilizing the cost savings inherent inCDHPs to reduce their overall health care costs."(American Association of Preferred Provider Organizations)

Study of CDHP Participants Shows Cost Savings and Greater Engagement
Excerpt:"Aetna members enrolled in a health savings account had more than 15% lower primary care physician use for non-routine visits, and more than 10 percent lower overall medical costs than members in a PPO plan, according to the insurer's latest annual study of its CDHPs."(Employee Benefit Adviser; free registration required)

Health Reform Provisions that Could Impact Consumer-Driven Health Plans (PDF)
3 pages. Excerpt:"The health care reform legislation approved by the 111th Congress (H.R.3590, now Public Law 111-148, as amended by the budget reconciliation bill, H.R.4872) will likely have a modest impact on consumer-driven health plans and their associated health care accounts (i.e., FSAs, HRAs, and HSAs). Earlier proposals that would have eliminated some of these options (particularly FSAs and HRAs) did not survive the legislative process. [The target page] is a description of the provisions that were included in the final legislation."(The Council for Affordable Health Insurance)

The Truth About Consumer-Directed Health Plans
Excerpt:"A recent survey reveals that cost trends for high-deductible health plans eventually rise at the same rate as those for other types of health plans. Lack of employee engagement, inadequate quality measurements and skyrocketing healthcare-delivery costs are factors."(Human Resource Executive Online)

Demystifying High-Deductible Health Plans
Excerpt:"[A]t least half of large employers offer a high-deductible plan. The figure in 2009 was 54 percent, according to the Health Care Cost Survey by Towers Perrin (now Towers Watson). The survey focused on Fortune 1,000 companies."(Workforce Management)

Wisconsin Bill Would Require Listing of Medical Procedure Costs
Excerpt:"The state Senate and Assembly have passed legislation that will require hospitals to disclose average prices for the 75 most common inpatient services and 75 most common outpatient services based on their contracts with commercial health plans. The legislation also requires the same information be disclosed for the 25 most common services provided by free-standing outpatient facilities, such as surgical and imaging centers, and by doctors."(Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

Demystifying High-Deductible Plans for Employees
Excerpt:"Intel's strategy was to convince employees to consider plan facets other than just the core high deductible element, including lower premiums, preventive care coverage and the accrual of a health account. After three years of year-round education and communication, enrollment in a high-deductible plan linked to a health savings or health reimbursement account rose from 14 percent to 49 percent."(Workforce Management; free registration required)

Which Consumer-Driven Health Care Option Should You Choose: HSAs, FSAs, HRAs? (PDF)
4 pages. Excerpt:"As the satisfaction of consumer driven health plans hasincreased over the years, the interest has grown significantly. Unfortunately, many consumers and employers are confused about the differences between the various consumer driven plans and which optionwould be best for them. The Council for Affordable Health Insurance (CAHI) first prepared this analysis in 2002 and has updated it annually in an effort to help people make informed choices about consumer driven health plans."(Council for Affordable Health Insurance)

Podcast: Employees Need Follow Up to Be Satisfied with CDHPs
Excerpt:"So says OptumHealth's Kathleen Frey. The vice president of client engagement shares why it's crucial to keep communication on consumer-driven plans flowing long after open enrollment ends and how to avoid the common dip in satisfaction new HSA participants experience after six months on the plan."(Employee Benefit Adviser; free registration required)

[Opinion] Health Reform Provisions that Could Impact Consumer-Driven Health Plans (PDF)
Excerpt:"The health care reform legislation making its way through the 111th Congress will likely have a modest impact on consumer-driven health plans and their associated health care accounts (i.e., FSAs, HRAs, and HSAs). Earlier proposals that would have eliminated some of these options(particularly FSAs and HRAs) did not survive the legislative process. [The target page] is a description of the remaining provisions that may be included in the final health reform legislation."(Council for Affordable Health Insurance)

What Do We Know About Enrollment in Consumer-Driven Health Plans?
Excerpt:"This article summarizes the literature on CDHP offer rates and enrollment. The percentage of employers offering CDHPs has gone from virtually none in 2000 to 12 percent in 2009. Based on the various sources of data on enrollment in health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs) and HSA-eligible plans, it appears that 15?19 million people were enrolled in these plans in 2009, representing 9?11 percent of the privately insured market."(Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI))

Text of EBRI Issue Brief; Consumer-Driven Health Plan Participants Display Cost-Conscious Behavior, Utilize Wellness Programs
Excerpt:"Individuals in CDHPs were more likely than those with traditional coverage to exhibit a number of cost-conscious behaviors. They were more likely to say that they had checked whether the plan would cover care; asked for a generic drug instead of a brand name; talked to their doctor about prescription drug options, other treatments, and costs; asked their doctor to recommend a less costly prescription drug; developed a budget to manage health care expenses; checked prices before getting care; and used an online cost-tracking tool."(Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI))

Research Shows Employers That Adopt Consumer-Driven Health Plans Favor Health Saving Accounts As Key Funding Option
Excerpt:"The analysis is based on survey results of 370 employers polled in the summer of 2009. In the issue brief titled'CDH plans shift to HSAs', researchers report that 44% of employers offer a CDH plan to their workers, a slight fall from 2008 (45%) but up from 28% in 2006."(Employee Benefit News; free registration required)

Employers Prefer HSAs in CDHP Offerings, According to Survey
Excerpt:"Among employers who offer a consumer-driven health plan (CDHP), health savings accounts (HSAs) continue to be the preferred funding choice, according to a survey by Aon Consulting and the International Society of Certified Employee Benefit Specialists. Of the 370 survey respondents, 44% of employers currently offer a CDHP to employees - similar to last year, according to a press release. Of those offering CDHPs this year, 56% are now using the HSA model, 35% are using the Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRA) model, and 9% use both. Over the last three years, the gap has widened between HSAs and HRAs, as the number of employers offering HSAs has gone from 48% to 56%, and the number offering HRAs has dropped from 43% to 35%."(PLANSPONSOR.com; free registration required)

Employers Drop, Shift Contributions to Consumer-Directed Health Plans
Excerpt:"[E]mployees with family coverage in a CDHP saw their employer contributions rise this year. The percentage of workers with CDHP family coverage receiving an employer contribution of at least $1,000 stood at 79% in 2009, up from 59% in 2008. The share of the adult population enrolled in account-based health plans remains small and growing slowly, the survey confirmed. In 2009, 4% of adults with health insurance were enrolled in an HRA or had a high-deductible plan with an HSA . . . ."(Employee Benefit Adviser; free registration required)

Availability, Contributions, Account Balances, and Rollovers in Account-Based Health Plans, 2006?2009
Excerpt:"The share of the adult population with private health insurance enrolled in account-based health plans (so-called'consumer-driven'health plans, or CDHPs) remains small but continues to grow. In 2009, 4 percent of the adult population with private health insurance was enrolled in an health reimbursement arrangement (HRA) or had a high-deductible plan with an health savings account (HSA), up 1 percentage point from the previous year."(Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI))

GM Salaried Staff Get Only Consumer-Driven Health Plans
Excerpt:"General Motors Co. will offer only high-deductible consumer-driven health care plans to its 24,000 salaried employees, effective Jan. 1. GM salaried employees will choose from two plans, both linked to health savings accounts. Under one plan, the deductible will be $1,300 for single coverage and $3,100 for family coverage, with a maximum annual out-of-pocket expense of $2,200 for those with single coverage and $5,000 for family coverage. Employees will pay monthly premiums ranging from $5 for those with single coverage and $15 for those with family coverage. In the other CDHP, deductibles also will range from $1,300 to $3,100, but GM will cover all eligible in-network expenses after the deductibles are met. The monthly premiums for that plan will range from $25 for individual coverage to $75 for those with family coverage."(Business Insurance)

GM Replacing Traditional Health Plan for Some Retirees
Excerpt:"General Motors Corp. will replace its traditional health care plan for salaried retirees younger than 65 with a consumer-driven health plan linked to health savings accounts effective Jan. 1, 2010. Under the new arrangement, posted on a GM retiree Web site, the annual deductible will be $2,500 for individual coverage and $5,000 for family coverage. The maximum annual out-of-pocket expense will be $3,500 for individuals and $7,000 for families."(Business Insurance)

[Opinion] Making Sense of High-Deductible Health Plans
Excerpt:"During the open enrollment season for employee benefits, now under way for next year, you are likely to hear a whole lot about Consumer-Directed Health Plans. You, of course, are the consumer. And you're being directed to save your employer a lot of money -- so much so that many employers are offering workers lucrative incentives to make the switch into a consumer-directed plan. Should you bite?"(The New York Times; free registration required)

Making Sense of High-Deductible Health Plans
Excerpt:"If you and I are spending more of our own money on health care, then we are likely to ask doctors and hospitals many more questions upfront and be more careful about which tests and procedures we receive. After all, until we exhaust that high annual deductible, it's our money on the line. Employers are pushing these plans because they can save the company as much as 20 percent, compared with traditional insurance."(New York Times; free registration required)

Myth #10: Consumers Can Make the Best Decisions About Their Medical Care
Excerpt:"In order to navigate high-deductible health plans and become good health care'consumers,'patients need information. Some patients want a lot of information and some want a little. Studies confirm that consumers prefer receiving medical information from their doctors rather than from an outside source such as the Internet, although that may change over time as Web-based and other health information sources become more user-friendly to patients. At the University of Virginia, we have developed a model system that identifies consumers'health information needs, their preferences and the ways in which they prefer to receive health information. Understanding how patients want to receive information about their medical care will lead to the design of appropriate educational materials, which, in turn, will promote better patient decision making."(Governing.com)

Employers Offering More High-Deductible Plans This Enrollment Season
Excerpt:"When open enrollment rolls around again this year, workers may be faced with more health insurance choices:'more employers may include a new type of plan that can chop premium payments by nearly 20 percent and give consumers a tax break,'The Associated Press reports.'The tradeoff is higher deductibles, which have the potential to swamp customers with big bills. The plans, called consumer-directed health plans, vary from employer to employer and require careful comparison with other choices before making the switch.'"(Kaiser Family Foundation)

Health Savings Account Balances Kept Growing in 1st Quarter of 2009
Excerpt:"[T]he average individual HSA account holder for the first quarter of 2009 was 42 years old and contributed $116 monthly, up slightly from an average monthly contribution of $111 for the fourth quarter of 2008. For that same time period, the average monthly employer contribution increased from $69 to $113 for individual HSA account holders. The average family HSA account holder for the first quarter of this year was 45 years old and contributed an average of $239 monthly, up from an average monthly contribution of $206 for the previous quarter."(AISHealth.com)

Audio and Text: Fixing Health Care by Altering Patient Behavior
Excerpt:"Patients are a strange sort of consumer. We don't know what anything costs, and even if we did, it does not matter because we are not covering most of the cost. This is not necessarily wrong. It simply means that as consumers, we are not very involved in containing costs. There is debate about whether this should change, with economic arguments on both sides. . . . David Goldhill, a businessman who wrote the article'How American Health Care Killed My Father'for The Atlantic magazine, argues that patients need to act more like consumers. Goldhill's father died from a hospital-borne infection. While sitting in the hospital, he says, he noticed all the ways in which a hospital does not act like a normal business.'I thought about all the things I had seen while accompanying my father in his time in the hospital that made absolutely no sense to me,'he says."(All Things Considered via National Public Radio)

Health Care Reform and Account-Based Health Plans: What Does the Future Hold for Employers? (PDF)
3 pages. Excerpt:"As the health care reform debate continues into the fall of 2009, employers that offer or are considering consumer-driven, account-based health plans (ABHPs) may wonder how those plans will fare after reform is fully implemented."(Towers Perrin)

Consumer Driven Health Plans Cover More Employees than HMOs, According to Survey Results
Excerpt:"Consumer Driven Health Plans (CDHPs) in the U.S. have surpassed HMO plans in covered employees, according to preliminary results released by United Benefit Advisors (UBA) from its 2009 UBA Health Plan Survey, a plan benchmarking poll with 17,655 plans from 12,316 employers reporting. According to a press release, CDHPs grew at a rate of 33.9% this past year and now cover more employees (15.4%) than HMO plans (13.6%)."(PLANSPONSOR.com; free registration required)

[Opinion] Only Health Care Consumers Can Bend the Cost Curve (PDF)
2 pages. Excerpt:"President Obama says that we must lower health care costs, and Budget Director Peter Orszag argues we can'bend the curve'of health care spending and save $700 billion a year by cutting out waste and unnecessary care. But the methods Orszag and others recommended are unproven, and some have been shown to cost more money than they save. Worse yet, these'experts'are doing their best to kill the only approach that has been proven to work: consumer driven health care."(Council for Affordable Health Insurance)

The Effects of Consumer-Directed Health Plans on Health Care Spending
Excerpt:"We use unique data from an insurer that exclusively offers high-deductible,'consumer-directed'health plans to identify the effect of plan features, notably the spending account, on health care spending. Our results show that the marginal dollar in the spending account is entirely spent on outpatient and pharmacy services. In contrast, inpatient and out-of-pocket spending were not responsive to the amount in the spending account. Our results represent the first plausibly causal estimates of the components of consumer-driven health plans on health spending. The magnitudes of the effects suggest important moral hazard consequences to higher spending account levels."(National Bureau of Economic Research; paid subscription or individual purchase required to retrieve fulltext)

Consumer-Directed Health Plans: Enrollment Grows in Less-Costly Coverage Option
Excerpt:"At Aetna for example, about 60 percent of new business sales for small-group employers in Connecticut have been in consumer-directed health plans, according to Steve Logan, head of small and middle market business in the Northeast.'(Hartford Business Journal)

[Opinion] Are CDHPs/HSAs Ready to Battle a Public Health Plan?
Excerpt:"In an attempt to resurrect CDHPs'standing and make them part of the healthcare reform debate, two reports released over the past week from the health insurance industry promote the idea of health savings accounts. But health insurers need more than just surveys given the heightened interest of a public health plan in Washington. The industry must improve on CDHP tools, such as cost and quality Web sites, real-time claims adjudication, and member outreach, in preparation of competition from a public health plan."(HealthLeaders Media via HCPro, Inc.)

[Guidance Overview] 2010 Minimums and Maximums for Health Savings Accounts Plans and High-Deductible Health Plans
Excerpt:"On May 14, 2009, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) released Revenue Procedure 2009-29,1 which announced various inflation-adjusted amounts for 2010 for Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and High-Deductible Health Plans (HDHPs). The IRS calculates the annual adjustments using the 12-month period ending March 31."(The Segal Group, Inc.)

[Guidance Overview] The 2010 HSA Contribution Limits and HDHP Minimum Deductibles and Out-of-Pocket Maximums
Excerpt:"EBIA Comment: The inflation-adjusted figures announced in this revenue procedure are not effective until 2010, but those working with HSAs and HDHPs will be glad to have these figures now as they plan both benefits design and employee communications for the coming year. On a related note, the annual catch-up contribution limit (for HSA-eligible individuals who are age 55 or older), set by statute, remains at $1,000 for 2010."(Employee Benefits Institute of America)

January 2009 Census Shows 8 Million People Covered by HSA Qualified High-Deductible Health Plans (PDF)
16 pages. Excerpt:"The number of people with HSA/HDHP coverage rose to 8.0 million in January 2009, up from 6.1 million in January 2008, 4.5 million in January 2007, and 3.2 million in January 2006. Between January 2008 and January 2009, the fastest growing market for HSA/HDHP products was large-group coverage which rose by approximately 35 percent, followed by small-group coverage which similarly rose at 34 percent."(America's Health Insurance Plans)

Consumer-Driven Healthcare Savings and the Need for Better Information
Excerpt:"With several years of actual CDHP data now on the books, we can begin to assess the impact and the efficacy of CDHPs. Milliman's'Consumer-driven impact study'(CDI), a risk-adjusted analysis of the impact of CDHPs at six U.S. companies, produced an interesting and varying picture of how these plans are doing. The high-level view may not be particularly surprising: a bunch of good news, a little bad/disappointing news, and a number of pending issues. In short, the future of CDHP looks promising but work remains to be done."(Milliman)

Workers Want to Know How CDHPs Work for Them, Not the Company
Excerpt:"Of course, we know that communication is critical to launching these plans and getting employees to enroll, especially when traditional options are still on the table. Where I see companies stumble is in keeping too much focus on the big picture instead of really explaining what the plans mean for individual workers. You can be guaranteed that eyes will glaze over at the first mention of the'millions of dollars'spent on health care. You can explain the company's investment in health care and the dollars added to each individual employee's salary in the form of medical benefits. And, you can use examples and simple profiles to show how the plans work and their value, without overwhelming employees with facts and figures. In-person (or virtual) meetings are of huge benefit too -- don't just pile on the print materials and expect employees to dig through it all."(Employee Benefit Adviser)

Diagnosis HSA ? A Treatment Plan for Employers (PDF)
6 pages. Excerpt:"As the economy continues to contract globally U.S. employers are seeking and finding benefit plan design and funding solutions to control and manage both short- and long-term costs. So what is the diagnosis for Health Savings Account (HSA) qualified plans and HSAs specifically? At the heart of the most innovative approaches is a combination of High-Deductible Health Plan (HDHP) design features joined with a tax-advantaged HSA. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, HSA-qualified plans reduce the premiums to offer health insurance and the savings nearly offset all of the deductible."(Buck Consultants)

Podcast: Health Plan Options Help Produce Cost-Conscious Health Care Consumers
10 minutes. Excerpt:"As employers look to control health care costs, more are adding account-based consumer directed plans and encouraging participation in wellness programs. Mercer's Sander Domaszewicz talks with Richard Klein about these and other cost-cutting measures employers are taking, as revealed in Mercer's National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans."(Mercer LLC)

Consumer-Directed Plans, FSAs Attract Well-Paid, Well Educated Employees, According to Study
Excerpt:"These were among the conclusions of the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) Data Brief #15, Consumer-Directed Health Care for Persons Under 65 Years of Age with Private Health Insurance: United States, 2007, released this month. Of privately insured persons younger than age 65, 17.3% were enrolled in HDHPs, 4.5% were enrolled in CDHPs, and 14.8% were in families with an FSA."(Wolters Kluwer)

Outlook for Consumer/Patient Engagement in Health Care: Consumer-Directed Health Plans (PDF)
12 pages. Excerpt:"The Employee Benefit Research Institute's (EBRI) December 2008 policy forum, titled'Outlook for Consumer/Patient Engagement in Health Care -- 30 Years into the Experiment,'took a detailed look at consumer-directed health plans and related issues. TWO VIEWS OF CONSUMER-DIRECTED PLANS: Policy forum participants heard two very different presentations on the prospects for consumer-directed plans. One speaker was optimistic, saying consumer-directed plans have worked because individuals in these plans have substituted less expensive care for more expensive care in order to minimize their out-of-pocket costs. Another speaker was skeptical, saying consumerism will have a'marginal impact'but will not solve the problem of rising health care costs."(Employee Benefit Research Institute)

U.S. Employers Expect Steady Rise in Health Costs, According to Survey
Excerpt:"U.S. employers expect increases in health care costs will stay at a steady 6 percent this year, twice the rate of inflation, according to a survey published on Thursday. The survey of 489 large U.S. employers also showed that more plan to offer consumer-directed health plans in 2010 to try to control cost increases.'Cost increases have stabilized, but the financial crisis is causing many companies to reevaluate their health plan strategies,'said Ted Nussbaum, group and health care practice expert at consultants Watson Wyatt, which helped conduct the survey."(Reuters)

[Opinion] Health Savings Accounts Are Ill-Advised
Excerpt:"Critics of health savings accounts counter that the plans favor the healthy and wealthy, and can increase medical costs for everyone else by requiring people to take out high-deductible insurance policies that kick in only after thousands of dollars in healthcare expenses have been rung up.'Most people can't even afford to put money into the account,'said Jerry Flanagan, health policy director for Consumer Watchdog in Santa Monica.'All the money goes into premiums and deductibles.'"(Los Angeles Times via)

Health Savings Accounts and High-Deductible Health Insurance Plans: Implications for Those with High Medical Costs, Low Incomes, and the Uninsured
Excerpt:"The authors note that: HSA/HDHPs are a highly tax-advantaged savings vehicle appealing to people who have high incomes and to those who are expected to have low use of health care services. For the uninsured, these approaches are less attractive since they often have low income and neither benefit significantly from the tax advantages now have the financial assets necessary to cover the large deductibles associated with the plans. Their ability to reduce system-wide spending is very limited.The plans have the potential to increase segmentation of health care risk in private insurance markets unless employers set premiums to offset the healthier selection into the plans or government subsidizes the higher costs associated with the remaining non-HSA market."(Urban Institute / Robert Wood Johnson Foundation)

HSAs Could Be Boon for Banks
Excerpt:"The Health Savings Account (HSA) business has apparently been kind to bank-based HSA providers, according to a new research report on the niche market segment. The market analysis by Celent indicated that the upward trend is due to the rising cost of health care and the increased adoption of HSA-qualified consumer directed health plans (CDHP). For the six-month period from January to July 2008, accounts grew by 22%, while total balances grew by 40%.'Given the financial industry's current liquidity crisis, such balance gains should come as very welcome news,'Celent commented in the report."(PLANSPONSOR.com; free registration required)

Health Savings Accounts and High-Deductible Health Plans: Fighting the Spiraling Cost of Health Insurance for Companies and Employees (PDF)
7 pages. Excerpt:"An editorial by Steve Forbes on Health Savings Accounts presented the most intriguing partial solution. After a lot of research (and despite our small size of fewer than 50 eligible employees), we decided to give our employees a choice between a traditional but somewhat costly Point of Service (POS) plan, as we had always offered, and a newer, high-deductible health plan (HDHP) accompanied by a Health Savings Account (HSA). Overall, that decision has proved to be one of the best moves we've ever made."(Institute of Management Accountants, Inc.)

Consumer-Driven Health Care: Promise and Performance
Excerpt:"This paper analyzes the evolution of consumer-driven health care in terms of its original vision, its subsequent implementation, and the transformations it has endured as it moves into its second decade. The market is generating product designs that combine elements of consumerism with elements of managed care, but the trend is always toward a stronger role for consumer choice and a weaker role for management of those choices by physicians, insurers, employers, and regulators."(Health Affairs)

Public Employers Focusing More on Disease Management, According to Survey
Excerpt:"A recent health care survey found the majority of public sector employers are working to control costs by implementing disease management and wellness programs, instead of introducing consumer-driven health plans (CDHPs). A news release from the the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans (IFEBP) said more than half of public employers who responded to the survey indicate they have implemented a disease management (69%) or a wellness program (65%)."(PLANSPONSOR.com; free registration required)

How Large Employer Health Plans Are Managing Change to Consumer-Driven Healthcare Model
3 pages. Excerpt:"This article provide tips on how to manage that change [to tax-advantaged heath accounts and wellness programs] -- how to accomplish a paradigm shift that affects every employee with a minimum amount of disruption."(Dorsey&Whitney LLP; Reprinted from BNA's Health Plan&Provider)

Steady Consumer-Directed Health Growth Is Expected for 2009: Survey Findings (PDF)
Pages 1, 4-5 of 9 pages. Excerpt:"Employee benefits consultants are optimistic that consumer-directed health (CDH) will continue to see steady growth in 2009 and could even become part of health reform efforts, according to the fourth annual survey conducted by Inside Consumer-Directed Care and ISCEBS. However, employers'and employees'limited understanding about the plans remains a key barrier to the acceptance of the plans. Despite these concerns, many respondents were optimistic that enrollment will continue to grow as employers become more comfortable with the price setting and employees gain a better understanding of the potential cost-saving benefits."(Inside Consumer-Directed Care and International Society of Certified Employee Benefit Specialists)

Can Free Advice on Care Choices Lower Health Costs?
Excerpt:"With a vast database of medical information at her fingertips, [a nurse] is testing the premise that patients can make smart choices about quality even when confronted with overwhelming, high-risk medical decisions. In theory, the collective power of those informed consumers will drive up quality and drive down costs, just as it has done in industries from autos to mutual funds.'That is the health care debate,'said Rob Webb, head of the Care Solutions division at OptumHealth, the Plymouth-based company that employs Imig.'Can this be a consumer driven economy?'"(Star Tribune)

High-Deductible Plans Could Be'Next Frontier'for Cost Management
Excerpt:"Until now, most health plans and employers have rewarded employees for participating in wellness programs rather than achieving good health in four areas: weight, not smoking, cholesterol and blood pressure. Employers are increasingly recognizing the connection between a person's lifestyle and their health care costs. More are willing to offer monetary incentives for employees to participate in wellness programs. Few, however, have tied incentives to employees'ability to be healthier."(Workforce Management; free registration required)

Findings From the 2008 EBRI Consumer Engagement in Health Care Survey
Excerpt:"[The study] provides nationally representative data regarding the growth of account-based health plans and high-deductible health plans (HDHPs) and the impact of these plans and consumer engagement more generally on the behavior and attitudes of adults with private health insurance coverage."(Employee Benefit Research Institute)