Today’s Managing Health Care Costs Number is 12
Researchers in this month’s Health Affairsused the Medical Expenditure Panel database to investigate why employer sponsored health insurance costs increased much less rapidly during the Great Recession. They looked at level of employment, likelihood employer offered insurance, and employee takeup of health insurance. The 2009-2011 period was a perfect storm – all of these went down. This doesn’t explain all of the decrease in medical care inflation –but it explains much of it. Even people who retained their insurance used less health care when the economy was at the brink.
That’s not what interests me most about the article. The researchers also found that the level of health plan benefits has been on a downward slide since at least 2001. In the early years “plan type” contributed to health care inflation as members moved from restrictive HMOs to PPOs with wider network. But “buy downs” where patients pay for a larger portion of the costs of their care have led to decreased medical premiums for the last 13 years.
Underinsurance has become a significant problem in the US. The exchange plans often feature high deductibles – deductibles that leave many patients functionally uninsured for all but preventive or catastrophic care. Employer coverage is moving in the same direction, with huge increases in out of pocket liability at the point of care. This research shows that this trend predated the Great Recession and Obamacare.
This shows that the number of insurance policies declined from 2008-2011
