More employers offering high-deductible plans
Payers may want to start bulking up their product lines to include more high-deductible health plans which, according to a new survey, are quickly becoming more popular among employers.
In their annual health benefits survey, Towers Watson and the National Business Group on Health, cite that 66 percent of companies with at least 1,000 employees offered at least one high-deductible health plan to their employees this year, and almost 80 percent of employers will do so next year.
What's more, 15 percent of employers only offered a high-deductible plan to their workers, compared to 7.6 percent only three years ago, reported Kaiser Health News.
But it's not only employers that liking high-deductible health plans. Their workers are warming to these types of plans as well, with 30 percent of employees enrolled in a high-deductible plan, an increase from 8 percent in 2006, Workforce reported.
Payers like Cigna can attest to the surge of high-deductible plans, which have grown by 26 percent so far this year for the Bloomfield, Conn.-based insurer. "As people become more familiar with CDHPs you'll see migration," Cigna Spokesperson Joseph Mondy told Workforce. "Why? Because they work. CDHPs will cost you less as an employee and as an employer, but you'll see improvements in health outcomes. We have seven years of data to support that."
To learn more:
- here's the survey
- read the Kaiser Health News article
- check out the Workforce article
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