Healthy Bytes

Consumer satisfaction with health insurance plans

Read time 229 words, over a minute

The Commonwealth Fund and Employee Benefit Research Institute surveyed users of “Consumer-Driven Health Plans” (CDHP). These would be the plans that combine a high-deductible health insurance plan with a tax-free Health Savings Account to cover medical expenses.

The few news articles I’ve seen about this survey focus on ‘CDHP users are dissatisfied because of cost’

According to the survey, 53% of the CDHP folks were not satisfied with their out-of-pocket expenses versus 21% of folks with a comprehensive plan.

Of course the out-of-pocket expenses don’t include the plan premium.
So my first question is… Who paid more for “health” care when considering both out-of-pocket and premium. And I suppose if you’re using tax free money for the out-of-pocket expenses with the CDHPs, that’s a factor as well.

Two other findings stood out to me.
One, 93% of folks with CDHPs rated their health as good or excellent compared to 89% of folks with comprehensive plans.
Secondly, total medical expenses as a percentage of household income was much higher for CDHPs versus folks with comprehensive plans. 23% of CDHP folks are paying 10% or more of their household income for medical expenses versus 9% of comprehensive plan folks.

So one may surmise, the primary reason for choosing a CDHP is cost. What this survey doesn’t truly answer is which plan is the best value.

Read more about the survey here.

This entry was posted on Mon, 11.Dec.2006 at 11:16 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.