30 Aug Workers Overwhelmed by Health Care Decisions

Employees are feeling the stress of healthcare costs. In the article below by Jack Craver, he provides insight as to the pressures workers are currently dealing with in todays healthcare marketplace.

Original Post from BenefitsPro.com on July 29, 2016

In case you haven’t noticed, Americans are in a tough spot on health care.

For one, their health care costs far more than that in any other country. Even worse, perhaps, they increasingly have many more decisions to make about how to pay for that care.

A new report demonstrates the frustration and hopelessness that grips so many in the face of health care decisions.

The study by Alegeus, the benefit account platform, surveyed 4,000 adults about their health care choices. It showed that there are seldom health or insurance-related choices that Americans make with relative ease or comfort.

There are no health care finance decisions, for instance, that a majority of Americans don’t find challenging. At the top of the list was “planning for out-of-pocket costs,” which two-thirds of respondents say they found either challenging or very challenging. Fifty-five percent say the same about choosing health care benefits.

Fifty-two percent said they found “maintaining health and wellness” challenging. If respondents are being completely honest with themselves (and the pollster), that figure would probably be much higher, considering that three-quarters of Americans are overweight or obese, and a certain percentage of those who aren’t still engage in unhealthy habits, such as problem drinking, substance abuse, or smoking.

One of the reasons health care is so expensive, many argue, is that for so long, Americans have been shielded from the true cost of care by generous employer-based insurance policies. As employers increasingly shift to high-deductible plans or consumer-driven health plans, millions of Americans are for the first time confronting decisions that in the past were left to higher-ups.

Alegeus CEO Steve Auerbach explained the shifting dynamics of health care shopping to BenefitsPRO.

“In the past, with health plans paying for the majority of health care costs, consumers have been conditioned to be disengaged,” he says. “This shift to consumer directed health care represents a complete paradigm shift in how consumers will need to manage their healthcare going forward — and there is a sizeable percentage of consumers who are resistant to this change. It is definitely going to take time for consumers to acclimate, build confidence, and rise to the occasion.”

He noted, however, that a similar “paradigm shift” took place with retirement benefits two decades ago, as many companies moved from defined-benefit pensions to 401(k)s.

“The infrastructure for education and support had to be built, and consumers had to adapt,” he says. “But now 401(k)s have become ubiquitous.”

See the original article here.

Source:

Craver, J. (2016, July 29). Workers overwhelmed by health care decisions [Web log post]. Retreived from https://www.benefitspro.com/2016/07/29/workers-overwhelmed-by-health-care-decisions?kw=Workers%20overwhelmed%20by%20health%20care%20decisions&cn=20160801&pt=Daily&src=EMC-Email&et=editorial&bu=BenefitsPRO&slreturn=1470060827