Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal has a very interesting article, “More Employers Overhaul Health Benefits”, which describes a movement just getting started whereby employers give their employees a fixed sum of money and let them choose their own plan from an online market place. The idea is that employers will be better able to predict and control their healthcare expenses for employees. Furthermore, employees will be able to get better value for dollars spent by selecting their own coverage options, deductible amounts, copays, etc.
In fact, in an exchange run by Liazon Corp., which has 60,000 people enrolled, 75% of workers have chosen less expensive plans than they had before, by accepting bigger deductibles and copays, as well as smaller choices of healthcare providers and restrictions such as primary-care gatekeepers.
This is such an appealing approach to private healthcare cost control that the Accenture Management Consulting Company estimates just five years from now there will be 40,000,000 business employees receiving their healthcare benefits in this manner. This would be a phenomenal development!
The United States spends 18% of GDP on healthcare altogether, both public and private, which is double the amount spent by any other country. This enormous expense is a major reason why wage growth is stagnant in our country as well as why the costs of public programs like Medicare and Medicaid are so high and contributing to so much government debt. It is critical for our country to get the rapid increase of healthcare costs under much better control. That’s why this new movement of employers and employees working together on this critical problem is such a big step in the right direction.
If the estimate by Accenture is anywhere nearly accurate about how fast this new private healthcare selection method will grow, then there will soon be an excellent opportunity for Congress to expand its benefits to the control of Medicare and Medicaid costs as well. This is very exciting indeed!
