According to this Washington Post article, the sky is still blue, the trashman still comes before you set out the trash, and people still would rather someone else pick up the costs for their healthcare.
People in a new kind of health plan that makes consumers pay for a bigger share of their care appear to be more cost-conscious than those in traditional plans, but half say they would switch if they had the chance, according to a survey released yesterday.
The survey of 1,389 people by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation found that 71 percent of those in the new "consumer-directed health plans" said the policies prompted them to consider cost when seeking health care, compared with 49 percent of those with more traditional employer-sponsored coverage.
How the reporter wrote thise lede with a straight face I'll never know. What, people don't like having to pay more of their own healthcare costs and/or having to think about what healthcare costs? Say it ain't so!
One of the complaints about company-sponsored (or government sponsored, for that matter) healthcare is that people tend to overuse and abuse it. If it only costs $10 to go to the doctor when your throat is sore, what incentive is there to just go buy a bottle of cough syrup at the local CVS?
But when people have to pay for the costs of their care, they tend to be a lot more skeptical of that $10 Tylenol or the $40 baby blanket.
When I had my oldest child, the nurse handed me everything on the counter and said, "Here, you're paying for this anyway." If I had been charged directly, I'm sure I would have said, "No, thanks." But that's part of the problem with modern healthcare. There are so many costs built in without patients ever having to determine if they want to pay for something.
According to the article, participants in the plan are becoming more savvy healthcare consumers.
(P)eople in the new plans were more likely to ask about the cost of a doctor's visit and inquire about the availability of lower-cost alternatives in treatments and tests. More than half, 55 percent, who sought care said the new plans have changed their approach to using health care.
And before anyone starts boo-hooing about the poor people on the health plans described in the original link:
Gail Shearer, director of health policy analysis at Consumers Union, noted that the survey found that people in the new plans tend to be wealthier, healthier and more educated than their counterparts in traditional plans, and were more likely to be white.
There are certainly reasons why these plans might not work for everyone, but there's a much larger part of the population which should start taking a greater interest in the healthcare they are getting versus the healthcare they are paying for.
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