Stupid Healthcare Study of the Century

From David Phelps at the startribune...

It's short, so I'll quote the whole thing..

Consumers with high-deductible health coverage are more likely to regularly
visit their primary care doctor for preventitive checkups, less likely to use
the emergency room and have fewer hospital admissions than people who have
traditional health care coverage where an employer pays for most of the
coverage.

That's the finding of a three-year study of so-called consumer-driven health care plans by UnitedHealth Group released today.

The study, one of the largest since the consumer-driven model picked up steam three years ago, sampled 55,000 workers. It found that cost per member for the high deductible plans actually declined while increasing 8 to 10 percent for other
plans from 2003 to 2005. Mike Tarino, chief executive of UnitedHealth's
Definity division, said the survey's results indicate that the growing popularity of health reimbursement accounts and health savings accounts shows that consumers "can make wiser, more financially sound decisions about their health care."

One problem... The study is self selecting.

I had a choice this year between a health savings account and a traditional one. After sitting down, examining the costs pros and cons, I came to the conclusion that the traditional plan would be cheaper.

Here's the thing I discovered. A HSA is only better if you are either healthy and never have to go to the Doctor or extremely ill. If you are somewhere in the middle, you're screwed.

The main problem... the cost of drugs.

So this study is self selecting, that is the people are healthy choose the HSA. The people who are not go traditional. As such, it's no surprise HSA are cheaper. It's also no surprise that traditionals increased costs considering the "cheap" people, i.e. the healthy, moved off them.

Now I will say this, it appears to me that the cost of drugs started skyrocketing shortly after insurance plans started covering them. So having a realization of the costs goes a long way towards generating outrage towards pharma corps.

So what are we going to do about it? You're going to be hard pressed to convince people that they should pay more as part of an interesting social experiment. Seems to me like there has to be a bit of give and take.

First off, let's reverse the law that let pharma's advertise. That's gotta increase costs by 20% or more considering how much of it they do.