Health care cost control and HSA updates

Last week I ran across this excellent white paper by Eric M. Parmenter on the Grant Thornton web site: “Health Care Benefit Crisis: Cost Drivers and Strategic Solutions”

Packed with facts and figures, this document begins with a comprehensive, yet concise analysis of sources of increases in health care benefit costs, including: the aging of the baby boomers, costs of new technology, legislative initiatives such as HIPAA, “managed-care saturation,” “direct-to-consumer prescription marketing,” “insurance industry consolidation and profit-taking,” our “litigious society,” poor health care quality, “preventable and avoidable accidents and health problems,” lack of insurance, and “consumer cost insulation.”

The latter portion of the document considers various “strategic solutions,” including a proprietary solution created by Grant Thornton, as well as health savings accounts, “accountable health plans,” and “integrated health advocacy programs.” Read more

Business Insurance carried this article by Jerry Geisel on health savings accounts a few weeks ago: IRS, Treasury resolve key HSA issues

Geisel discusses new regulatory guidance on what health benefits are considered to be preventive and thus not subject to the cost-sharing requirements of the high-deductible plan that is an essential element of a health savings account.

Also addressed in this article is regulatory action on whether prescription drug costs would have to be subject to the cost-sharing requirements of the high-deductible plan. Read more

SFGate.com has this by Laura Landro for The Wall Street Journal: Doctor ’scorecards’ are proposed

In one of the most ambitious efforts yet to provide health-care quality ratings for consumers, 28 large employers, including Sprint Corp., Lowe’s Cos., BellSouth Corp., J.C. Penney Co. and Morgan Stanley are teaming up to develop “scorecards” to help employees choose doctors based on how well they care for patients — and how cost-efficient they are.

The companies, which cover two million employees and their dependents, say they plan to use claims data provided by insurance carriers to measure how individual physicians stack up against well-established and generally accepted quality standards based on medical evidence. Read more

Simply given the number of employees and beneficiaries involved, this has the potential of having a significant impact.

Sphere: Related Content