Consumer-Driven Healthcare

This refers to a program in healthcare that enables the sick persons to be in charge of their health. It enables patients to access insurance plans to directly pay their health expenses. Consumer-driven health care allows individuals to respond to health costs that are small. Conversely, the government is responsible for handling high bills in the health sector.

This approach has been of great importance to the health care plan. This is because; it has enabled workers to save to meet their health care expenses. Customer-driven healthcare has become wide spread in US. This is after the federal law was passed in 2003 to allow citizens to access tax incentives. The key objective of launching the consumer-driven healthcare plan was to reduce the expenses in health care. Furthermore, it motivated employees to select health options that were less expensive (Hardie, et al., 2011).

Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRAS) is a major element of consumer driven health care plan. This arrangement enables the employers to fund the workers account with an amount that can aid to pay their small health care bills. This money is not taxable which implies that it eradicates the tax burden that is imposed on workers. Another main feature of the consumer driven plan is Health Savings Account HSA. It incorporates an account that is exclusive to the worker and his members of family.

Employees deposit a percentage of their salary in the account to meet their medical bills. Clearly, the cash that is put in this account is not taxable. Additionally, it is not essential for the employer to be part of the saving process. Flexible Spending Account FSA is a third concept of this plan that requires workers to keep a given cash to cater for healthcare costs. It is not taxable and is flexible when workers save the amount that they can afford. Consumer driven health care is beneficial because it is cost effective and not taxable.

References

Hardie, N. A., Kyanko, K., Busch, S., LoSasso, A. T., & Levin, R. A. (2011). Health literacy and health care spending and utilization in a consumer-driven health plan. Journal of health communication, 16(sup3), 308-321.

Metz, S. (2014). Consumer-Driven Health Care. Health Affairs, 33(5), 905-905.

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