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I thought I would shed some light on the growing movement in the US regarding consumer-driven healthcare. Each weekend, I read my Sunday New York Times. Over the past few years, I have noticed an ever increasing volume of content related to Health “Savings” Accounts as the driving force behind consumer-driven health care. Recently, the topic has started to surface in Canada as well. In fact, I have an article on this very topic in the upcoming edition of Benefits Canada – be sure to check it out! (Sorry about the gratuitous plug on my work!)
The controversy in the US over consumer-driven healthcare comes from the growing trend of large corporations pushing the decision making process for health spending into the hands of their employees. In doing this, many corporations have decided to offer their employees a Health Savings Account with a high-deductible insurance product and abandon their fully-insured plan. The key driver is cost as an HSA offers greater budget certainty versus traditional insurance plans. Those who oppose the model claim that consumer-driven healthcare places too much power in the hands of the employee and that the employer no longer has any responsibility in their health and well-being. Those in favor of consumer-driven healthcare believe that the model is a more sensible approach as it allows the employee to tailor their health benefit program to the unique needs of their family as opposed to being presented with a canned plan designed to satisfy the needs of all employees. Either way, the trend has become major news in the US and the HSA industry south of the border is exploding as we speak. By what about Canada and other countries? Will they follow suit?
My upcoming Benefits Canada article (the January edition) outlines the differences between the Canadian Health “Spending” Account and the US Health “Savings” Account. It also examines the challenges and opportunities for Canadian companies interested in adopting a similar consumer-driven healthcare model as their contemporaries in the US. While I will not get into the details on this blog before the article is printed (I would prefer that you pick up a copy of the magazine), I will cover some of these similarities in future posts.
