{"id":219,"date":"2012-07-10T11:37:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-10T15:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=219"},"modified":"2012-07-10T11:37:00","modified_gmt":"2012-07-10T15:37:00","slug":"why-im-skeptical-that-hsas-will-work-to-reduce-spending-greatly-parts-1-2-the-incidental-economist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=219","title":{"rendered":"Why I\u2019m skeptical that HSAs will work to reduce spending greatly \u2013 Parts 1 & 2 | The Incidental Economist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why I\u2019m skeptical that HSAs will work to reduce spending greatly \u2013 Part 1 | The Incidental Economist<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You\u2019ve seen a slide like this before, I bet. But basically, what it\u2019s showing is that a small number of people account for a ton of personal health care spending. In fact, the bottom 50% of spenders account for only $36 billion in personal health spending. That\u2019s less than 3% of all of it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Why is this important? Well, because the entire idea of health savings accounts and increased cost sharing is to encourage people to spend less on personal health spending. The idea is that people who don\u2019t really need the care will choose to spend less. What we often ignore, however, are the high spenders. Those people, on the right side, would blow through their health savings account pretty quickly. At that point, they have no more deductibles and no more co-pays, and there are no more incentives to spend less. So the whole idea won\u2019t work on then. It might, however, work on people who don\u2019t spend as much.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But as the chart shows, there\u2019s not that much to save there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Why I\u2019m skeptical that HSAs will work to reduce spending greatly \u2013 Part 2 | The Incidental Economist<\/a><\/p>\n

Health savings accounts, and increased cost sharing, will likely work for those who don\u2019t need the care and are healthy. But they spend so little, that even if they are influenced, we won\u2019t save much. Those who are spending the real money are older, sicker, and need help. If they spend less, it\u2019s more likely they will suffer. And it\u2019s likely many won\u2019t spend less, since there\u2019s no chance of their keeping money in their accounts. If they<\/em> don\u2019t spend less, then we can\u2019t save real money.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I get why people think cost sharing and HSAs will work. But when the theoretical possibilities meet the real demographics and patterns of spending, I can\u2019t see how this will work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why I\u2019m skeptical that HSAs will work to reduce spending greatly \u2013 Part 1 | The Incidental Economist You\u2019ve seen a slide like this before, I bet. But basically, what … Continue reading “Why I\u2019m skeptical that HSAs will work to reduce spending greatly \u2013 Parts 1 & 2 | The Incidental Economist”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumer-driven-health-care"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}