Anyone have experience Consumer Driven Healthcare Plans?

slm

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 10-30-03 AT 05:06PM (CST)[/font][p]Our corporate office is considering making the change from a traditional HMO/PPO plan to a high-deductible Consumer Driven Healthcare Plan.

A dozen or so employees from various departments have been asked to be part of an employee "forum" and will be allowed to ask questions after the Insurance Company's presentation on Monday. I'm the office manager of a remote location (we're in Maine - Corp is in FL) and will be joining the meeting via video conference.

Does anyone have any experience with CDHC plans? What has employee response been? What are the Pros/Cons from an employee standpoint?

Thanks in advance for any info you can offer!

Sharon

SMace

Just read this today. Probably to late. Anyway two key components are good wellness benefits (you don't want them trying to save money by not having preventative health care) and great education and education resources for how to spend their health care dollars. While you may save money in the short run by tossing them $2000 a year, you need to think how that will impact their health in the next ten years. If you are setting them up to be in poor health (I'm slowly dying of a terminal disease, badly need a transplant or have an infant in PICU, but by Golly I had $1500 in pocket each year) you will lose that savings and more. Please tell us how the meeting went.

slm

Thanks, SMace. You brought up a couple of points that the Benefits Administrator and I were also concerned about.

It turns out that the Corporate Execs made a last minute decision to stay with BCBS for 2004 and canceled the meeting. 8-|

- Sharon

WOCO Frank

BCBS is who our CDHP is through.

They make complete financial sense. Employees still hate them.

SMace

Why do they hate them?

WOCO Frank

The monthly savings are quickly forgotten everytime they look at how far they still have to go to meet their deductible.

I can show them the math when they sign up, and they think it's a great thing. Everytime they use their coverage, they forget that math.

Spouses are especially critical.