“Free” Money?

By Nevin Adams, EBRI

While I appreciate the convenience of gift cards, giving them always feels a bit lazy. As a recipient, however, I very much appreciate the flexibility and the freedom to buy, within the limits of the card, pretty much anything—sometimes things for which I wouldn’t even have thought to ask much less buy for myself. And, arguably, in at least a couple of cases, things I SHOULDN’T have bought, and probably wouldn’t have bought, if it hadn’t felt like “free” money.

That very human inclination to spend our own money more judiciously than what we are given underpins the growing interest in consumer-directed health plans, such as the now decade-old health savings account (HSA), or its slightly older cousin, the health reimbursement arrangement, or HRA[i]. Both are designed to provide workers the ability to pay for health care-related expenses with funds drawn from the account – and yet, EBRI’s 2013 Consumer Engagement in Health Care Survey (CEHCS)[ii] found evidence that adults with an HSA were more likely than those with an HRA to exhibit a number of cost-conscious behaviors related to use of health care services.

Specifically, the analysis found that those with an HSA were more likely than those with an HRA to:

• report that they asked for a generic drug instead of a brand name (52 percent HSA vs. 49 percent HRA);
• check the price of a service before getting care (41 percent HSA vs. 34 percent HRA);
• ask a doctor to recommend less-costly prescriptions (40 percent HSA vs. 38 percent HRA);
• develop a budget to manage health care expenses (32 percent HSA vs. 22 percent HRA); and
• use an online, cost-tracking tool provided by the health plan (27 percent HSA vs. 21 percent HRA).

Moreover, the 2013 CEHCS also found that adults with an HSA were more likely than those with an HRA to be engaged in their choice of health plan, when they had a choice. They were, according to the analysis, more likely to report that they had talked to friends, family, and colleagues about the plans; used other websites to learn about health plan choices; and were more likely to have consulted with both their employer’s HR staff and an insurance broker to understand plan choices, among other things.

HRAs and HSAs are very similar, so why might those differences in behavior occur between those covered by the two plan types? Consider that an HRA is an employer-funded health plan that reimburses employees for qualified medical expenses, in contrast to the HSA, which can have both employer and employee contributions. HRAs are generally “notional” accounts maintained by the employer, and while funds unspent at the end of each year can be carried over for future use, that option is at the employer’s discretion.

On the other hand, and as the EBRI report notes, an HSA is owned by the individual and is completely portable, with no annual “use-it-or-lose-it” rule. Additionally, those who do not use all the money in their HSA during their working years can use it to pay out-of-pocket expenses after they retire.

Said another way, for most people the HSA balance probably feels like it is “their” money[iii], and they spend it accordingly, while their HRA feels more like a gift card with an expiration date. It’s certainly not “free” money, but it may feel that way to them.

• Notes

[i] Overall, 26.1 million individuals with private insurance, representing 15 percent of the market, were either in an HRA or an HSA-eligible plan.  See “Who Has “Consumer-Driven” Health Plans?”

[ii] “Consumer Engagement Among HSA and HRA Enrollees: Findings from the 2013 EBRI/Greenwald & Associates Consumer Engagement in Health Care Survey,” is published in the June EBRI Notes here.

[iii] In many cases it is, of course, literally funded by their contributions.

Penny “Whys”

By Nevin Adams, EBRI

We tried to introduce our kids to money and financial concepts relatively early. We encouraged them to save some of their monetary gifts, let them put the money in the offering plates at church, and provided them with a modest allowance for chores commensurate with their age and abilities. For all that, they never really seemed to fully appreciate the “value of money” until they started earning a paycheck outside the home (I knew they were “getting” it, when they wanted to know who FICA was!).

Perhaps because of their early education, there weren’t massive behavioral changes. I was pleased to see their spending on gifts for family members rise with their income and, after an initial spending “spurt” (likely attributable to a sense of newfound wealth), they seemed to settle in. But what happened next was that, while they would spend money on others, they tended to hold back. In fact, what seemed to emerge was not so much a pattern of setting money aside, but a reluctance to spend; not so much saving, as hoarding. Indeed, it was interesting to see how they reacted to spending now that it was their own money.

One of the premises underlying the introduction of consumer-driven health plans is that they do a better job of “engaging” the participant/consumer in the cost(s) of their health care decisions, either in providing a finite amount of financial resources from the employer for that purpose, designing the plan so that the worker has a more direct financial involvement in the decision, or both. In fact, the 2013 EBRI/Greenwald & Associates Consumer Engagement in Health Care Survey (CEHCS) found evidence that adults in a consumer-directed health plan (CDHP) and those in a high-deductible health plan (HDHP) were more likely than those in a traditional plan to exhibit a number of cost-conscious behaviors.

However, one of the policy concerns with those designs is that individuals would make medical decisions based on expense, rather than medical necessity. Indeed, recent research by the EBRI Center for Research on Health Benefits Innovation (CRHBI) notes that medication adherence—which has been shown to produce substantial savings as a result of reductions in hospitalizations and emergency room use—is known to be affected by out-of-pocket cost to patients.

That EBRI CRHBI study, published in a recent issue of The American Journal of Managed Care,
examined the impact of adopting a health savings account (HSA) consumer-directed health plan (CDHP) on medication adherence for individuals with five chronic conditions disease. Based on the experience of a large manufacturer that replaced all of its existing health insurance options with a CDHP-HSA, the research found that in the first year under the new plan, the number of prescriptions filled, the proportion of days covered, and the proportion of patients who were adherent declined for all conditions except asthma/COPD. While the effects diminished some in the second year for those with diabetes, the levels persisted among those with hypertension, dyslipidemia, and depression.

These findings have important policy implications, in that—notwithstanding the presence of HSAs and employer contributions—medication utilization and adherence declined when high deductibles were imposed.

As the article explains, if these reduced levels of medication adherence for chronic conditions are sustained, it is likely that they will increase medical costs and adversely impact worker productivity. Certain regulatory changes might permit some mitigation of the impact, by supporting CDHP design changes that would provide first-dollar coverage for chronic disease medications for participants using HRAs. Moreover, it suggests that employers may need to provide education and ongoing support to encourage appropriate use of account funds so that prescription drug use for chronic conditions remains a priority for their workers.

There’s an old saying that cautions against being “penny wise and pound foolish”—the tendency to conserve relatively small amounts, only to be wasteful when it comes to larger expenditures. It is, after all, one thing to set money aside for a rainy day, and another altogether to trigger a rainy day by not spending enough on the right ones.

Notes

[1] “Findings from the 2013 EBRI/Greenwald & Associates Consumer Engagement in Health Care Survey” is available online here.

[1]  “Medication Utilization and Adherence in a Health Savings Account–Eligible Plan” is available online here.

System Upgrades?

By Nevin Adams, EBRI

Adams

I recently upgraded the operating system on my iPhone. Not that that would normally be a big deal—I generally try to keep such things current, despite the occasional “bumps” that inevitably come with software upgrades. But this time the upgrade wasn’t just about improving performance and fixing issues that had been identified since the last update.  No, this one not only LOOKED different, some core functions were said to work differently—and “different” in this case appeared to be a problem for a number of users.

So, before I took the “plunge,” I spent some time trying to do some research—trying to find out what kinds of improvements I could anticipate, and to better understand the complaints associated with an upgrade from which there was, apparently, no “return.” The upgrades were readily quantified (on the vendor’s website most notably), although I think it’s fair to say they had a motivation in promoting the new system. However, most seemed to be relatively unimportant in terms of how I used, or planned to use, my device. As for the problems: Well, they were equally easy to find, but harder to quantify. And, like those product ratings on any website, were from people I did not know and whose judgments I had no particular reason to trust.

Consequently, stuck between conflicting perspectives, and seeing no particular advantage in making a change, I did what most human beings do. Nothing. Until, with my current contract expiring, I realized that the upgrade was likely to be imposed on me at that point, regardless of my preferences.

On October 1, the public marketplaces (formerly known as connectors or exchanges) associated with the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) will begin to come online—in various phases and, from what one can discern from published reports and official updates, in various states of readiness. The advantages have been outlined, as have the potential pitfalls. Doubtless the experiences will be as varied as the experience(s) and expectation(s) of the individuals involved.

However, it’s hardly a new idea. Back in 1980 the conservative Heritage Foundation began advocating that the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program (FEHBP—a marketplace for multiple insurers and scores of plan options) become a model for expansion of health coverage through an individual mandate. Today, simply telling those in Washington, DC, that “the marketplaces are just a version of FEHBP” brings an immediate understanding of the concept.

A year ago, EBRI published an Issue Brief that outlined the issues related to private health insurance exchanges, possible structures of an exchange, funding, as well as the pros, cons, and uncertainties to employers of adopting them. That report contained a summary of recent surveys on employer attitudes, as well as some changes that employers have made to other benefits that might serve as historical precedents for a move to some type of defined contribution health benefits approach. It is a report that provides both current analysis alongside a historical perspective—a resource for those looking to better understand and plan for the potential changes ahead.¹

That said, when Paul Fronstin, EBRI’s director of Health Research and the EBRI Center for Research on Health Benefits Innovation, updates the information in the future, he may well call them marketplaces, unless the name “upgrades” again in the weeks ahead!

Notes

¹ See “Private Health Insurance Exchanges and Defined Contribution Health Plans: Is It Déjà Vu All Over Again?” online here.

You can find a catalogue of recent EBRI research on PPACA and its potential impact on employment-based health benefits online here.

EBRI’s Health Savings Account Data in NYTimes

The Feb. 1 New York Times’ “Makng the Most of Your Money” column (“Bucks”) featured results from the January EBRI Issue Brief on health savings accounts (HSAs) and health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs).

New York Times, Feb. 1, 2011

The article notes:

“According to the results, there is some evidence that consumers with the accounts are more likely to engage in certain cost-conscious behaviors than those without the accounts. Specifically, those with the accounts appear more likely to check whether the plan would cover care, more likely to ask for a generic drug, more likely to have a budget and more likely to check the price of service.

“On the other hand, the researchers also found that there are certain cost-conscious behaviors that those with the accounts don’t appear any more likely to engage in than those without the accounts. These included talking to a doctor about prescriptions and costs, asking a doctor to recommend a less costly drug and checking the quality rating of a hospital or doctor.”

The full Times article is online here.

The full EBRI report is online here.

EBRI: HSAs, HRAs Continue to Grow

The number of health savings accounts (HSAs) and health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs) increased to 5.7 million in 2010, according to a new report by the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). Assets in these account-based health plans increased to $7.7 billion in 2010.

HSAs and HRAs can be used to reimburse participants for qualified medical expenses. They are offered by some employers in order to give their workers more control over funds allocated for health care services.

Growth in these accounts is tracked by the EBRI/MGA 2010 Consumer Engagement in Health Care Survey, which also examines numerous other aspects about health care consumers who use these plans, in comparison with traditional health plans.

The findings are published in the January 2011 EBRI Issue Brief, “Health Savings Accounts and Health Reimbursement Arrangements: Assets, Account Balances, and Rollovers, 2006–2010,”

The press release is online here. The full report is online here.

Media Coverage:

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