New year, new idea: High-value health plan concept aims for bipartisan appeal

Excerpt from IHPI press release:

As Washington grapples with the fate of the Affordable Care Act, a pair of health care researchers has proposed a new way to design health insurance plans that could win bipartisan support – and has already started to do so.

In an invited commentary in JAMA Internal Medicine, the University of Michigan’s Mark Fendrick, M.D., and Harvard University’s Michael Chernew, Ph.D., put forth the framework for what they call a “high-value health plan.”

It’s the first peer-reviewed publication to put forth the idea, which has also appeared in a bipartisan U.S. House bill introduced in the last Congress.

The idea combines the consumer-driven, market-based concepts of high deductible health plans linked to health savings accounts, with exemptions that enhance coverage for the clinical services that have been proven to benefit patients the most.

Currently, all HDHPs must cover certain preventive services without asking patients to pay for them out of their deductible. But existing regulations do not allow these plans to cover services to manage chronic disease.

As a result, patients with chronic illnesses such as diabetes, depression, or heart disease must pay the entire cost of their tests, appointments, and prescriptions until they meet their plan’s deductible. Many of these services are proven to keep their condition from getting worse, and in some cases have been found to lower total health care spending…Read More