Coverage In Name Only: High Deductible Health Plans

High deductible health plans jeopardize patient health.

• Plans are not required to pay for preventive care. Consumers, forced to pay the full price of office visits, could choose to forgo preventive care, such as breast exams or immunizations.
• Consumers with chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes could ration or go without necessary treatments to keep their diseases at bay.

High deductible health plans are based on a false premise: that consumers can “shop around” to get the “best deal” on their healthcare.

• The premise behind high deductible plans is that consumers would be forced to be more cost conscious about their healthcare – shopping around for less costly treatments.
• California Healthcare Foundation conducted a mystery shopper survey at California hospitals; 622 mystery shoppers had to endure a maze of phone transfers, voicemail messages and call backs before some could receive price information; many didn’t even get a price.
• Consumers who need medical help in an emergency don’t have time, or emotional wherewithal to shop around.
• Virtually no information about the quality of medical services exists anywhere – a key factor for consumers who want to shop around.
• We are asking individual patients to use their bargaining power to bring down costs when large purchasers, like CALPERS and employers, have struggled to do it.

High deductible health plans would result in higher healthcare costs – not lower – for all consumers.

• Delaying preventive care and disease maintenance only makes patients sicker, and subsequent treatments to undo the damage more costly.
• Out-of-pocket costs will be high for high deductible plan enrollees, a population that can least afford this burden.
• Promoting high deductible plans does not address the true cost drivers behind escalating costs of health care. For 10 percent of the population that uses 64 percent of health care dollars, HDHPs will make no difference.
• A proliferation of high deductible plans could potentially break up the healthcare market in to the healthy (who would find HDHPs more attractive) and those who are less healthy.