Comments on: I Like Safeway’s Health Plan!

By: Scott

Scott — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 18:11:27 +0000

My wife and I pay over $5,000/yr for the Safeway Cigna plan. Cigna is really picky and we have to fight for every filing. Every year for the last 5 years premiums have increased. I would much prefer that health insurance be abolished along with the companies that provide it. They are a cost drain. It should be replaced with national health CARE.

By: marru

marru — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 06:40:28 +0000

Free Health Insurance Leads Generation
Being a health insurance agent is not a simple job. One may expend the entire day conversing with prospects, but the ultimate result might be wearisome, more than ever if your consumer discards you. Even if you manage to clarify the significance of your insurance policies and superior to any other agent working to enlist that prospect as a client, it may not be enough to, at the end of the day, make a sale.
http://mgbfinance.blogspot.com/2009/06/free-healt…

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:23:36 +0000

NPR has been having a lot of segments lately on the health care reforms in Congress. One thing that gets mentioned repeatedly is just what you point out: the current system distorts pricing by removing any incentive for individuals to opt for anything but the most expensive treatment. In general, this is because the true cost of the care is hidden by employer-provided insurance. In my mind, the easiest (and therefore most likely to be successful) step towards a solution to this problem is simply to tax healthcare benefits as income. Doing so would make the tax system more coherent–total compensation would be taxed, rather than certain types of compensation being sheltered despite the fungibility of dollars–and provide market pressure to lower costs as employees, suddenly aware of the true price of their benefits, pushed employers for cheaper plans.

By: ClaireTN

ClaireTN — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 18:33:05 +0000

@CTF – I think the HSA plans are a little different than the HRAs. As I understand it you can take the HSA with you when you go, but not an HRA. My husband has an HRA at work. There is an individual and a family cap. Since I'm on a separate plan at my employer, I'm not sure what the family cap is. His plan is like the Safeway one, except that the employer contributes 3k per year, and he has to pay the next 3k. This is his first year on the plan, so we're not sure what we think yet. So long as he's basically healthy, I think we'll break even. My one concern is that I don't like the idea of having to do cost comparisons in the midst of a health crisis.

By: Emily

Emily — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 11:00:05 +0000

These sorts of plans with high deductibles and HSAs are becoming common in my area. I think they are a step in the right direction but we are missing a crucial piece to make informed decisions. It's very difficult to price shop medical costs, aside from prescriptions..

By: LOL

LOL — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:35:40 +0000

If you call your insurance company first, you should be able to get everything confirmed and nail down what it should cost. You really shouldn't put off those things, especially the asthma meds (that one is life threatening).

By: Annie G

Annie G — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:02:01 +0000

We have a plan similar to that one.

We usually will say "we pay $150 per month, for the privilege of paying the first $2400 a year ourselves." Although, the reality is that our company puts $1200 a year into our HSA, so we are really paying the first $1200. And since that is pre-tax money, it's really less. Is it a good deal? Depends.

Our plan also supposedly pays for preventive care, but it seems like, no matter how the doctor reports the yearly visit for our son, we always end up having to pay. So, I have not had the guts to go for a yearly checkup, pap smear, mammogram, blood work, etc for me in the past few years, since I'm afraid we'd have to cover it. Also, due to the high cost of meds on this plan (oh how I miss the copay days) we have dropped nearly all our regular medications, including about half of our son's asthma drugs.

Guess we will see how all the plays out.

By: Tyler King

Tyler King — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:35:18 +0000

@Stacy – I work at a company that builds HRA software to do this very thing. It sounds like Safeway still has a group plan, but they raised the deductible and they self-insure the difference. That way, the costs from a catastrophic illness are still spread across a group plan, but the everyday expenses aren't insured.

That said, most companies with 10,000+ employees have an entirely self-funded group plan (meaning they pay 100% of what the insurance covers) and they just use a carrier for the administration. When you have 10,000 employees, one person having a heart attack isn't that expensive.

@SBE – There are two ways that HRAs can be used without hurting people with pre-existing conditions. The article says safeway employees have a $4000 out-of-pocket-max which is not that much (relative to a lot of group plans). Either way, the sick employees are still encouraged to elect into the plan because they're still receiving more benefit than the healthy ones.

Another option is for the employer to cancel the group plan entirely and give HRA dollars to employees who then buy individual policies. In that case, sick employees go on state-funded risk pools which are generally more expensive that normal individual policies, but not normally much more expensive than most group policy premiums.

Also, this system (we call it GroupHRA) absolutely works for small business. The majority of our employer clients are 10-50 person companies and this model works perfectly for them.

By: LOL

LOL — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:31:48 +0000

The medical community really needs to get it's act together in regards to the number of errors they make — errors that end up requiring more medical care to fix (increasing costs).

When my child was in the hospital, there were numerous times I caught errors with the nurses bringing the wrong medication, or incorrectly handling an IV line. But I still couldn't catch two serious errors with his medication: blood pressure medication that is considered on overdose for an adult, and a too rapid weaning from steroidal medication that caused 4 ER visits and finally a trip to a different city's hospital before a doctor could figure it out.

And another thing, doctors prescribing medications that can only be described as OVERKILL for what is being treated. My wife was prescribed a drug (Reglan) that had listed as a side effect: "permanent movement disorders" — for constipation / heart burn!

And these insurance companies want to say that it is MY FAULT for costs being so high? Absolutely ridiculous.

By: SBE

SBE — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:17:20 +0000

I'm concerned that this could leave those with chronic illnesses at a disadvantage. Luckily, I don't have diabetes or something like that, but this could really affect those people who have severe diseases with high treatment costs.
Having skin in the game is great, and is the best way for people to start paying attention to costs. I agree with Ken that more transparency is needed as well. But this plan could also lead to adverse selection in the insurance pool as it makes healthy people winners and sick people losers. Insurance only works if you have a large, diverse pool of participants with various risks. If healthy people are winners, then you may segment your risk pool have a pool that is uncharacteristically sick, and that drives costs up.
Finally, keep in mind that this system would still not work for Small Businesses, which is the working population that (arguably) needs help the most. This plan will not address their need for greater risk pools to keep costs down. But I would love to see this system where I work!