Consumer-directed health plans could reduce costs and utilization, experts claim: but the jury is still out on whether CDHPs discourage benes from seeking needed care.(CDHC)

Publication: Medicine & Health

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COPYRIGHT 2006 Eli Research, Inc.

If all privately insured, non-elderly Americans switched to consumer-directed health plans, the United States would see a 4-percent to 15-percent drop in care utilization, researchers find. But health savings accounts and health reimbursement accounts--which CDHP enrollees often pair with their high-deductible plans--could off-set this reduction in utilization.

Also, CDHP enrollees are not younger but tend to be more wealthy and healthy than traditional comprehensive plan enrollees, according to a new report on consumer-directed health care by economist Melinda Beeuwkes Buntin and her colleagues at RAND, which the journal Health Affairs published on its Web site on Oct. 24. The report is one...

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