Benefits Of A High Deductible Health Plan

The availability of healthcare is an extremely important issue in the United States. There are millions of Americans that are uninsured in the U.S. A high amount of uninsured people are from minority groups such as Hispanics and African-Americans. High deductible payments, the cost of prescription drugs, and lack of health insurance coverage cause many Americans to choose to live without insurance to save money for everyday expenses beside healthcare. Without health insurance, people do not have access to quality healthcare. Most citizens are aware of the issues in the healthcare system, but the disagreement comes when discussing how the best approach on ameliorating the system. Some believe that a more public and universal healthcare system is the best approach. Others believe that America works best through free enterprise and private institutions, and believe health insurance should be more privatized. However, health care has been shown to work best and be more available through proper public government control as it will allow for all Americans to have access to equal healthcare, in which money does not dictate health.

Rising health insurance premiums have made healthcare unaffordable in the United States. Health insurance premiums in this country have undergone a steady rise over the past few years while incomes have remained the same. More than 50% of individuals with low incomes holding private insurance in the United States are unable to afford their healthcare costs (Collins, Gunja, Doty & Buetel, 2015). In addition, costs related to healthcare are equally unaffordable to 25% of working-age individuals who hold private health insurance policies (Collins et al., 2015). According to the Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research and Educational Trust (Kaiser/HRET) survey on employer health benefits, employer-sponsored health insurance plans have also had moderate rises in premiums in 2013 for both individuals and family coverage (Claxton et al., 2013). While

Another downside to High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP) is the apprehensiveness to use the insurance, even the benefits that are free or at a low cost. “Enrollees in high-deductible health plans are likely to reduce the preventive care use and are largely; because they are unaware of the fact that preventive care benefits are free or at a low cost (Dolan February 2016).” Recent analysis showed that low-income workers were more likely than higher earners to avoid certain kinds of care when they were enrolled in high-deductible plans coupled with savings accounts. The analysis from the Employee Benefit Research Institute, found that low-income people even skipped free preventive services like flu shots and cut back on doctors’ visits. Primary and preventive

In 2016 the American population again saw their insurance plans increasing their premiums from 10%-13% across the board. This is much more than expected, and even worse the co-op insurance plans have failed. The government sponsored non-profit plans offering lower rates have not proven sustainability in result of the majority going bankrupt even after receiving 1.2 billion dollars of taxpayer’s money. The Affordable Care Act is already becoming a huge tax expense amongst Americans leading to the U.S. increasing the overall national debt. Starting 2018 all high end health insurance premium plans will come with a 40% excise tax. Also, changes in flexible spending accounts have occurred as over the counter medicines are no longer qualified expenses for flexible spending accounts and health savings accounts. The health care tax deduction threshold account increased to 10% from the previous established 7.5%. All these changes through different avenues account for more reasons we continue to see costs increase through the ObamaCare.

The United States (US) is distinguished for its medical advances, leading technology and astonishing discoveries in various science fields. These advancements in the health care ground have impacted and improved the health care delivery of several in the nation. The US is found among the wealthiest, most developed countries around the world; however, it is the only developed country that fails to provide universal health care to its people. Health care in the US is described as fragmented, inaccessible, and expensive. Diebel (2015) compared the health system in the US to other nations and supported that it is extremely overpriced, yet the end result does not always support its cost. Lack of coverage, high copayments plus deductibles force Americans to postpone seeking medical attention resulting in undiagnosed health conditions and complications of current diseases. In 2010, under President Obama’s mandate, Americans witnessed the birth of a controversial legislation, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). The goal of the PPACA is to improve just about every aspect of the system such the health of Americans, health care access and quality, while reversing the health care expenditure (Hahn and Sheingold, 2014). The aim of this paper is to discuss the PPACA and the Medicaid Expansion under the PPACA including its risks and benefits; as well as, the impact of the expansion in the healthcare delivery

Healthcare is essential to the nature of our well- being, it provides some financial relief to individuals or families during doctor or hospital visits. Medical care is very expensive, and without health insurance it can be even more of a financial burden. However, being able to afford health insurance has been a challenge for a lot of family’s. For some, they must choose whether to feed their families, pay utility bills or make monthly health insurance payments; so, they allow the insurance to laps. The

In the current U.S. system the free market prevails and companies, in this case, major insurance providers “compete” for business. This competitive business approach should in theory drive costs down. For some reason, however, an argument can be made that it has produced the opposite result in profiteering. The nation’s largest insurer, UnitedHealth, boasted over a 10 percent revenue increase in 2013 according to Forbes (2013). Health insurance affordability contributes to the disparity in access to health care, as evidenced by the fact that there are millions that are still uncovered. A greater majority of certain minorities lack both health insurance and the financial resource to seek out either health care or insurance. While insurance companies reap huge profits the percent of private sector companies offering health insurance has dropped to less than 50 percent (Kaiser, 2013). There is decidedly a lack of coordination of care for this at risk population as well, since treatment is rendered sporadically and with continuously changing providers. The last major challenge is that of improving the quality of health care. According to a 2010 report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General (OIG), an estimated 13.5 percent of Medicare beneficiaries experienced adverse events during their hospital stay and an additional 13.5 percent experienced a temporary

For those Americans not covered or find their work coverage too expensive, there is a new way for them to buy insurance on their own called Health Insurance Marketplaces. Some states have named these marketplaces something else. The Health Insurance Marketplace is like a virtual insurance megamall where private insurers compete for American’s business. Americans can pick out how much coverage they want, how much they want to pay for it, from cheaper high deductible plans to more expensive plans. Regardless what plan is chosen, all plans will cover a complete set of services like hospital visits, doctor visits,

As the implementation of The Affordable Care Act (ACA) nears, news media is featuring a large number of individuals whose health insurance coverage is being cancelled. The current administration claims that their objective is for everyone to have health insurance, but there is a gap between their new legislation and the results. American consumers are falling in the gap between private insurance plans that are too expensive, and the poorly developed government system. Despite claims from the Obama administration, the Affordable Care Act limits the American public’s choice of private health insurance plans.

On March 23rd of 2010 one of the most highly controversial bills in American history, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), better known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed into law. The Affordable Care Act attempts to reform the healthcare system by providing more Americans with affordable quality health insurance while curbing the growth in healthcare spending in the U.S. The reforms include rights and protections, taxes, tax breaks, rules for insurance companies, education, funding, spending, and the creation of committees to promote prevention, payment reforms, and more. Four years since being passed has the Affordable Care Act begun to make healthcare more affordable to Americans? When it comes to the affordability of health care In the United States, health care has always been a private for-profit industry. The main purpose of the ACA is to make insurance more affordable and expand coverage to uninsured Americans by enacting a number of provisions. This research paper will explore some of these provisions, document their details and decide whether are not they are truly helping make health care more affordable.

The rising healthcare cost is an issue that affects many working class Americans. Experts have tried to come up with different ways to make health care more affordable and easily accessible to all. Despite all the efforts and even after the Affordable Care Act, there are still millions of Americans without health insurance coverage and therefore unable to access the necessary medical care. According to a 2015 report by the U.S Census Bureau, there are over 33 million uninsured Americans. (“Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2014 - p60-253.pdf,” n.d.) The Affordable Care Act has unquestionably made healthcare more accessible and reduced the number of uninsured Americans. However, there are still millions of

One of the greatest changes in healthcare in the past ten years has been the rise of managed care, much to the displeasure of many patients and physicians alike. Managed care arose out of concern about spiraling healthcare costs and was designed to encourage physicians to give patients treatments that were cost-effective out of their own financial interests. "The consumer strategy was directed at imposing some barriers to use by levying various forms of co-insurance. The most common approaches used either deductibles (where the consumer paid the first portion of the bill a technique familiar in other types of insurance) or co-payments (where the consumer paid a portion of the bill and the insurance company the rest) or a combination of both' (Kane et al 1994). Managed care has given health insurance companies an increasingly significant voice in how treatment is administered and allocated. Managed care has proliferated in the past decade despite considerable criticism of the practice of 'nickel and diming' patients as well as the considerable bureaucratic red tape it is has generated. Also, research indicates that healthy, well-insured patients tend to over-consume care without meaningful co-pays but poorer, sicker patients can be deterred even by moderate co-payments and suffer negative health consequences (Kane et al 1994). However, managed care has not gone away and is a reality that all healthcare

With so many insurance companies and employers going to High Deductible Health Plans (HDHP), it would be beneficial to patients if the cost of healthcare was lower. According to Gapenski & Pink (2011), “Most employers pay some (or all) of the HDHP premium but require the employee to fund the HSA.” HSA’s were created so that anyone that participates in the program can use the money set aside to help pay for certain medical cost, dental care, vision care, some medical supplies and some over the counter drugs. I believe that HSA’s will have an impact on healthcare cost for the following reasons:

By going to an in network physician I am eligible to receive my insurance company discount which will help to reduce my overall out of pocket cost for any services that are provided. This is particularly important to me for the plan that I have is a HDHP, which stands for high deductible health plan. This year’s minimum deductible for single person is $1,300. Which is the amount that I have to pay out of my pocket before my plan will begin to pay. However, my out of pocket cost don’t stop there. Once I meet my annual deductible of $1,300, I am still required to pay 10% of all cost. So it’s important to me to maximize every health care dollar that I spend. In fact, I am seeing more and more employer sponsored health plans move away from HMO and PPO based plans to HDHP/ CDHP plans. This was particularly prevalent in 2014 and 2015. Per article in Health Day, “More employers moving to high-deductible health plans and consumer cost-sharing is also like to increase by 5 percent in 2015.” The thought is that health-plan participants will become better health care consumers. In actually this is not happening, for consumers are choosing to forgo necessary care because of the cost

I agree, consumers are cost conscious when force to pay high deductibles. My place of business, gives their employees $2750 towards their deductible, which is $2750. A single employee reaps the benefits and does not have to pay premiums or copays. After, they meet their $2750 deductible they’re covered 100%. However, family plans have higher deductibles and premiums. We can get the $2750- however, we’re responsible to pay the other half and premiums for children or family.