The Benefits Firm

One of the major complaints with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is that it does very little or nothing at all to control the cost of health care. The PPACA, at its’ current state, does a fairly good job of consumer protection and extending coverage to those who do not currently have it. Adding fifty some odd million people should make everyone else’s premiums go down, but probably not by much. The main reason health insurance premiums have increased at such a rapid rate is because health care cost has risen at an equally fast rate.

All of us would agree that our premiums for medical care have increased substantially in recent years. It is interesting to note that according to The Kaiser Family Foundation our out of pocket costs for health care have fallen from 40% in 1970 to 15% in 2006.

So how are we as a country and you as a consumer, going to be able to start paying less for your health care and health insurance premiums? One of the most obvious ways is to increase transparency.  As a broker I get comments all of the time at how people are amazed when I show them real prices of medications and procedures.  People are still very timid to move to High Deductible Health Plans (HDHPs) or even higher deductible PPOs. According to the Society for Human Resource Management in 2010 only 27% of US covered workers faced a deductible of at least $1,000. In addition, only 13% of employees were on a consumer-directed HDHP plan.

The only way for our health insurance premiums to decrease (or at least not increase by so much) is to decrease the amount we spend on medical care. There are many potential solutions to lowering medical costs and medical inflation on a macro scale. On a micro scale the most cost effective thing to do would be to have consumers realize what their true medical costs are.

John Jennings, Benefits Specialist

If you would like to look into a HDHP please contact John @ 451-4560 or John@thebenefitsfirm.com