The Movement Toward Consumer-driven Healthcare
I have written before about shopping mall medicine and the idea of consumer driven healthcare.
Last night I had a annoying conversation with a man at a party who talked about health caring being a “right” and this morning I saw an interview with the wealthy democrat, Ned Lamont who is poised to defeat Joe Lieberman in the primary this Tuesday for Lieberman’s senate seat. Lamont wants “universal” health care and laws requiring employers to provide health insurance for their employees.
More government regulation and the increased use of coercion and force in the marketplace is the wrong way to go.
The best way to provide healthcare to the most people is a free market in medicine. All you have to do is look at the rapid advances we’ve seen in high-tech over the last 25 years, which is largely driven by consumers who demand more and more for lower and lower prices, to see that the highly regulated, overpriced, inefficient healthcare system has a few things to learn about meeting consumer demand at affordable prices.
While good quality healthcare as become less affordable in the last 25 years, high-tech gadgets of all kinds have become more easily available and can be purchased by even the poorest of individuals. When I first started working as a computer programmer at Pacific Bell in 1980 (which became Pacific Telesis) their mainframe computers took up an entire city block and cost millions of dollars. Now computers that are hundreds of times more powerful can held in the palm of the hand are are affordable to people of very modest incomes.
Healthcare hasn’t seen the same progress because it is so heavily regulated by the government which has served to protect special interests while limiting consumer choice.
I Googled “consumer driven healthcare” just to see what came up and found some interesting sites including the American Management Association which states that consumer-driven healthcare is the wave of the future but still in its infancy.
AMA presented Jerry Ripperger of Principal Financial Group at a Current Issues Briefing devoted to a topic that’s generating a lot of buzz in HR circles today—“Is Consumer-driven Healthcare Right for Your Company?” Faced with spiraling healthcare costs and consumer demand for greater flexibility, many organizations are now considering a move into consumer-driven healthcare, which is defined as a system where consumers, not the company or insurance provider, determine how and where to spend their healthcare allotments.
The merits of various types of consumer-driven programs are being debated in trade journals, on the Internet and at boardrooms all across the country. Yet, according to a recent AMA study on the topic, more than 60% of the HR professionals surveyed don’t have the necessary information to decide whether or not these programs are appropriate for their organization. This lack of data may partially account for the small number of companies that have implemented consumer-driven plans so far. As Ripperger told the AMA audience, “The consumer-driven movement is still in its infancy. We are only about six inches into a 100-mile journey.”
Ripperger explained that consumer-driven healthcare “simultaneously creates both a consumer moment and a consumer experience.” The consumer experience combines the individual’s sense of empowerment, because he has direct input into decisions about his healthcare, with the knowledge and tools he needs to make those decisions. However, said Ripperger, the consumer must be held accountable for the financial consequences of his decisions and rewarded for appropriate behaviors. “Consumers have choice in every area of their lives, except healthcare,” he stated. “We have to make sure that when it comes to healthcare, their choices are well-informed and won’t result in catastrophic decisions.”
Good healthcare must be based on science and there is no scientific basis for the belief that others have a “right” to determine what you do to your own body nor is there any evidence that others are obligated to pay for your care. These are both subjective beliefs not supported by evidence that should never be allowed to drive a healthcare marketplace.
Even in these early stages of the migration to a consumer-driven health care plan, some big changes are taking place and resulting in reduced costs. This article reports on the rapid increase in the number of walk-in clinics and another article talks about how direct cash payment by patients to doctors is cutting out a lot of costly, wasteful insurance paperwork.
Breaking the monopolies that special interest groups have on the healthcare market will go even further to drive down healthcare costs.
There is hope.
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