Finger pointers can't settle on who's to blame
for health costs
By Julie Appleby, USA TODAY
OXFORD, England — Insurers blame rising drug
costs. Drug companies blame HMOs and hospitals. Doctors blame
lawyers. And, it seems, everyone blames consumers.
The problem? Health care costs are continuing
their rapid rise — averaging 13% this year and expected to be more
than that next year.
"Everyone is a villain," says Drew Altman of
the Kaiser Family Foundation, a research group. "Everyone is blaming
everyone else because they're trying to shift the cross hairs onto
someone else."
Patients and employers should not expect relief
from rising costs anytime soon. The blame game is heating up because
no one really has an answer on how to slow the increases.
"We should get used to the idea of double-digit
health insurance increases for the next 10 years," says Uwe
Reinhardt, an economist at Princeton. "I see no relief coming."
The first volley in the blame game came this
spring, when an organization backed by health insurers released
reports critical of the drug industry. Spending on prescription
drugs, the studies said, grew more than 17% in a year — an increase
of $22.5 billion — with much of the increase blamed on a relatively
small number of expensive, often not very innovative drugs.
Not so fast, said the drug industry.
New medicines can save money by keeping people
healthier, the drug industry said. Health insurers, it said, should
be encouraging the use of more drugs. And the drugmakers issued this
kicker: HMOs spend more money on administrative costs — such things
as paperwork and CEO salaries — than on drugs.
And pity the poor consumers. Nearly all of the
health care industry's players blame them for rising health care
costs. Patients, they say, naturally want the best and latest
treatments — but they also want others to pay for it.
There isn't one correct answer to the question,
"Who's to blame?" Some say that's not even the right thing to
ask.
"The real question is, "Is more spending bad?
Or is more spending good?" asks Carmela Coyle, senior vice president
for policy at the American Hospital Association. "Too often we look
at health care simply as a cost. It can be an investment."
No matter what, expect to see more pressure on
patients to use less health care — or less expensive health care. In
the early 1990s, that restrictive role fell to HMOs, whose rules and
conduct prompted a public backlash. This time, employers will
require workers to pay more toward their health insurance in the
hope that workers will end up as better consumers.
Blaming the consumer
Health insurance premiums rose an average of
11% last year and are expected to rise about 13% this year. Next
year could be even worse, driven by rising hospital spending, an
aging population, increasing drug costs, a labor shortage, pressure
for profits and a host of other factors.
"The people to blame in the end, the ones
ultimately responsible, are consumers," says senior economist
Christopher Thornberg of UCLA's Anderson Forecast, a national survey
of businesses. "People don't adequately take into account the true
costs of the services they're consuming."
That's a refrain that's selling well among
those looking for ways to slow rising health care costs.
Already, employers are asking workers to pay
more. The Anderson survey of 460 companies around the nation found
that more than 70% expect to make changes to their health benefits
next year, including reducing the level of benefits and increasing
the amount employees pay toward premiums and deductibles.
At Puget Sound Energy, a gas and electric
utility in a Seattle suburb, medical costs have risen an average of
19% in the past year, says Dorothy Graham, vice president of human
resources.
"There's really only a couple of options,"
Graham says. "You can absorb the increase, reduce the benefits or
reduce the number of employees, none of which are popular."
Her company is working to educate employees
about health care costs — and help them make wise choices. Employers
in her area are also banding together to see if they can negotiate
lower prices with insurers. Even so, workers will likely pay more
toward their health benefits next year.
"No matter how you explain it, when you get
your paycheck and it's less, it's hard to swallow," says Graham.
The self-employed and those who buy their own
insurance are being hit the hardest. Their premium increases are
often far above what large employers are seeing. Some brokers have
also noted an increasing reluctance by insurers to offer individual
policies: More applicants are turned down for coverage, sometimes
for seemingly minor health problems.
Laurel Kaufer, 40, a self-employed mediator in
Woodland Hills, Calif., says she's had four premium increases in the
past 11 months for a policy that covers herself and her two
children. She now pays $300 a month, plus a $1,500 deductible and
40% of doctor bills.
She resents comments from the industry that
consumers are driving rising health care costs.
"That's absurd," says Kaufer. "Consumers who
are using the industry exactly as it was intended can't be held
responsible for driving up the costs because they're doing so. I
have insurance so I can go to the doctor when I need to."
No relief from rising costs
Everything tried in the past decades — from
wage and price controls under President Nixon to managed care — has
ultimately failed to stem rising costs.
Some observers say those failures were because
the nation never really went all the way with any one idea. Others
say the numbers show the intractability of the problem: Health care
costs will always go up, they argue, because of advances in medical
treatments and an aging population.
"We've had no meaningful and sustained way to
control health care costs," says Altman. And now, "There's no big
new idea for controlling costs, so the result is a free-for-all.
Working people will pay more, benefits will be cut back, and we're
likely to see an increase in the ranks of the uninsured."
While there is unlikely to be a sweeping change
in the health system, such as national health insurance, a number of
smaller approaches to slowing health care costs are being tried.
Among the ideas: charging patients more if they
use higher-priced hospitals, cutting administrative costs through
better use of computer technology, getting patients with chronic
diseases into special management programs, and doing away with
one-size-fits-all health insurance payments in favor of paying
insurers more to cover sicker employees. (Related story: Policymakers
propose baby steps to curb costs)
Will health care costs eventually moderate?
Experts are divided.
"I actually believe costs can go down, although
most of my colleagues think I'm crazy," says Regina Herzlinger, a
professor of business at Harvard who has written several books on
the health care system.
To control costs, Herzlinger says, consumers
need to participate more in health care spending decisions,
something they can't do unless the system changes.
She says a combination of getting employees to
spend more of their own money toward health care — and paying
insurers more to cover the sick — could create a true market in
health care and lower spending. But skeptics disagree, saying there
isn't enough data for patients to truly shop around. And should
they?
"When we get really sick, we're not facing
choices about 'Is the treatment worth it?' It's hard for us to know
whether any particular treatment will be worth it in many cases. We
rely on doctors and to some extent health plans for those
decisions," says Richard Kronick, professor of family and preventive
medicine at the University of California at San Diego.
Some experts, including Herzlinger, say
insurers don't have any incentive to offer special health care
programs to the sick because they don't want to attract those
patients. "Many insurers get paid the same (by the employer) whether
the patient is a healthy person or a person with diabetes," says
Herzlinger. "The average annual cost of treating a diabetic is
$11,000, and for a healthy person it's virtually nothing."
"Risk-adjusting" for individual employees —
paying more for the sick and less for the healthy — would encourage
insurers to provide specialized care for those with diabetes or
heart conditions — and thereby improve health and reduce
hospitalizations, she says.
Others aren't so sure that would really reduce
costs. They add that such an effort to base payments on who is sick
and who is not could easily violate patient privacy.
Consumer advocates fear that information about
who costs employers the most could also be used to discriminate in
hiring or promotions.
Consumer-driven care
Nor are some skeptics convinced that a new type
of health insurance policy — dubbed consumer-driven care — will work
to control costs, either.
Such plans are being offered by an increasing
number of employers, including Medtronic, Novartis and Humana.
Generally, the employer gives each worker a set amount of money
toward health care — say $1,500 a year — along with a
high-deductible health plan, say one with annual deductibles of
$2,000 or more. As long as the patient keeps expenses below $1,500,
the plan doesn't cost her any additional money.
After that, the employee picks up the
difference toward the deductible. After the deductible is met, the
employer or insurer picks up the rest of the tab for the year. Any
money left over is often rolled over to help cover the next year's
health costs. Employers say they expect such plans will help control
costs by lowering monthly premiums, shifting more costs to workers
and getting employees to make better choices on how they spend their
health dollars.
"Consumer-driven health plans will reduce the
rate of increase of health care costs 2% to 4% over time. It won't
eliminate costs," say Don Broecker, director of employee benefits at
Charter Communications, a broadband company in St. Louis. Charter
began offering such a plan this year, among several other options,
after revamping its benefits plan in response to three years of
rising costs.
But many also admit that it's too early to tell
how much savings may occur from consumer-driven plans. Some critics
say the amount of money that each worker has control over isn't
enough to create a true market — or put a dent in health care
spending.
For some services, patients may have the time
to shop around for a lab test or an elective procedure, such as
laser eye surgery, to try to find the lowest price. But for most,
Kronick argues, they can't.
"If I have diabetes or coronary artery disease
or some problem walking, I can't go to a physician and say, 'How
much will it cost to get better?' The best I can find out, maybe, is
how much the physician will charge for a visit, so I might be able
to compare charges with different physicians," he says. "But the
main thing is how many visits? How many tests? What kinds of tests?
For all those tests, I can't effectively shop ahead of time."
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