HDHPs Continue to Grow in Popularity - American Society of Employers - Anonym

HDHPs Continue to Grow in Popularity

Employers who are not yet providing High Deductible Health Plans as part of their group insurance offerings may soon find themselves compelled to reconsider that option if they are not already doing so. The number of such plans and the people covered by them has continued to increase nationally and locally, such that they should no longer be thought of as experimental or even cutting edge. They are part of the mainstream.

Further, as the penetration of these plans grows and impacts the war for talent, the Great Lakes States as a group house a significant proportion of that penetration. Therefore, Michigan employers concerned about competing effectively for talent should not find themselves to be outliers, at a competitive disadvantage vis-à-vis employers in our neighboring states, if they offer such plans.

In the 10-plus years since Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) first came on the scene, the growth in the number of people covered by High Deductible Health Plans (HDHPs), which complement HSAs, has been robust. New data from America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) confirms that year-over-year growth, while no longer exponential as it was in the early years, still runs in double digits.

Year-over-year increases have averaged over 23% since 2007, and 15% since 2011. From early 2013 to early 2014 the increase was 12%.

ASE’s 2013/2014 Michigan Policies & Benefits Survey showed that approximately 30% of the respondents offer HDHPs.

AHIP’s Center for  Policy and Research has conducted a census of national and state-by-state data each year, and the new data is contained in this year’s iteration of the census.

As of January of this year, 17.4 million Americans were covered by such plans. Most of the plans are employer-provided group plans and most those covered—74% as of January—are in large employee groups. Seventy-five percent of companies responding to the survey reported enrollment in these plans of at least 10,000.

Michigan is one of the leaders among the states both in terms of the number of people covered by HDHPs (5th) and the percentage of employed people under age 65 who are in such plans (8th). The Great Lakes states including the five states contiguous to Michigan are well represented in these categories. Michigan has 691,000 enrolled in such plans, trailing among others Illinois and Ohio but ahead of Indiana, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Twelve percent (12.0%) of employed Michiganders under age 65 are in these plans. The state trails Illinois, Minnesota and Ohio in this category but is ahead of Wisconsin and Indiana. The national percentage is 7%.

HDHPs demand knowledgeable consumers if they are to work effectively. They came on the scene as medical costs grew at unsustainable rates from year to year. Insurers and plan designers had come to realize that consumers needed to have “skin in the game” in order to ultimately put reasonable brakes on the growth of medical costs.

And so an important component of the HDHP approach is employee education and decision-making support. The AHIP census has gathered data in that area for several years. The message seems to be getting across clearly to employers who offer HDHPs; more and more of them are providing an impressive array of information to their employees to help them manage their medical costs effectively:

  • Nine of ten (91%) offer health education information.
  • Almost nine of ten (88%) offer information about their physicians’ hospital affiliations, medical training, etc.
  • More than eight of ten (84%) give enrollees access to their HSAs’ financial information (e.g., account balances, etc.).
  • Seventy-five percent (75%) provide online access to their enrollees’ medical records.
  • Seven of ten (70%) provide quality data about specific hospitals.
  • Two of three (66%) provide information about provider costs (e.g., negotiated rates, drug prices, procedures).
  • More than half (57%) provide physician-specific quality data.

It was not that many years ago that High Deductible Health Plans were very much on the cutting edge in the world of medical insurance. Employers who adopted them were seen as experimenters at best and callous penny-pinchers willing to throw their employees under the cost-control bus at worst. Today they are not seen that way. HDHPs are mainstream plans that have proven their viability.

Source: AHIP press release 7/9/14
 

 


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