Healthcare Costs on the Run
From March 2005
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Recent Developments
Pre-tax Health Savings Accounts , formerly available only for the self-employed, were extended to include individuals in 2004 and might be a viable strategy for use with high-deductible plans. “You have to run the numbers to see if it’s right for you,” says Gutfeld.
Another recent development is the consumer-driven plan, which allows employers to put aside pretax dollars for employees to use in paying for routine care. Like the HSAs, these health-reimbursement arrangements are often used in conjunction with high-deductible plans and may provide cost-savings to the employer.
“The most promising recent developments,” says Jill M. Yegian, Ph.D., director of CHCF’s Health Insurance Program, “are things like paying for performance — basically, the notion of figuring out what is excellent care and then setting up metrics and measuring performance against those metrics and putting dollars on that.”
These methodologies include evaluation of both cost and efficiency, she says, so you get the “best bang for your buck.”
Do I Need a Broker?
The question of “brokering up” really depends on how insurance savvy the company is. Although some brokers charge fees to clients for their services, many don’t.
Continued...
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