Rethinking Consumerism in Healthcare

Resources

On April 21, 2016, we hosted a conversation about the role of consumers in shopping for healthcare value. The Hub released a Research Brief noting new evidence suggesting the following:

• High-Deductible Health Plans cause consumer harm and do not lead to better value from our healthcare system.

• Providers need to be the focus on efforts to address high health care costs and uneven quality.

• Truly consumer-centric benefit designs would reflect this evidence and feature affordable cost-sharing, strong quality signals and reflect robust efforts to bring down the underlying cost of health care.

Our expert panels presented and reacted to this evidence. The Hub also hosted a May 6 webinar for people that were not able to attend the April 21 in-person event.

High-Deductible Health Plans Don't Work

• Reid, Rachel, et al., "Impact of Consumer-Directed Health Plans on Low-Value Healthcare," American Journal of Managed Care (December 2017).

• Agarwal, Rejender, et al., "High-Deductible Health Plans Reduce Health Care Costs and Utilization, Including Use of Needed Preventive Services," Health Affairs (October 2017).

• Sood, Neeraj, et al., Price Shopping in Consumer-Directed Health Plans, RAND, Washington D.C. (March 2013).

• Reed, Mary E., et al., “In Consumer-Directed Health Plans, A Majority of Patients Were Unaware of Free or Low-Cost Preventive Care,” Health Affairs, Vol. 31, No. 12 (December 2012).

• Brot-Goldber, Zarek, et al., What Does a Deductible Do? The Impact of Cost-Sharing on Health Care Prices, Quantities, and Spending Dynamics, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Mass. (November 2015).

• Swartz, Katherine, Cost-Sharing: Effects on Spending and Outcomes, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (December 2010). 

• More High Deductible Health Plan resources

Providers Must be the Focus of Cost-Containment Efforts

• Health Care Cost Institute,Spending on Shoppable Services in Health Care (March 2016).

• List of provider directed efforts

Cost Sharing with Prescription Drugs

• Eaddy, Michael T., et al., "How Patient Cost-Sharing Trends Affect Adherence and Outcomes: A Literature Review," Pharmacology & Therapeutics, Vol. 37, No. 1 (January 2012).

• Goldman, Dana P., Geoffrey F. Joyce and Yuhui Zheng, “Prescription Drug Cost Sharing: Associations with Medication and Medical Utilization and Spending and Health,” JAMA (July 4, 2007).

Making Benefit Designs Truly Consumer Friendly

• VBID and Reference Pricing resources

• Affordable Cost Sharing 

• Feature High-Value Provider Networks

• Get Transparency Right 

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