Consumer Driven Health Plans/ HSA news from FierceHealthcare

Climbing on the national transparency bandwagon, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee has kicked off a program for enrollees that will let them know ahead of time what they'll owe for physician visits. The program affects only the roughly 64,000 of the plan's 1.2 million Tennessee members who are currently enrolled in its consumer-driven health plan.

Under the pilot program, physicians' offices will be able to use BlueCross billing software to make the estimate, which should take …

While posting prices online is fine, it may not necessarily help patients choose the best value for their dollar, critics say. While lower prices may suggest a hospital is more efficient--and getting patients well faster--that's not necessarily the case, advocates note. In addition, the rash of hospital prices being posted vary widely; for example, some hospitals quote their median fee paid to contracted health plans, while others quote "sticker prices" that don't really give a sense of a …

Consumers are responding to the advent of higher-deductible plans and higher co-pays as you might expect. According to a new study by consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, patients who bear a higher percentage of the cost of health services are choosing lower-cost options for their care, such as substituting generics for branded prescription drugs or primary care visits for specialist visits. In particular, the study noted, consumers seemed to be happy to switch medications to save money, …

BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee has become the latest health plan to address a key issue with high-deductible plans. Following in the steps of peers like UnitedHealth, the Blue plan has created a pilot program under which providers can find out, in real time, how much a patient owes, and collect on the spot. The pilot, which is already live in …

Hoping to make CDHPs more palatable--and to profit on deposits, of course--the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association is moving to expand the reach of its Blue Healthcare Bank. The bank allows BCBS members to establish health savings accounts, then use debit cards or checks to access HSA dollars. The idea is to make it simpler for consumers to use and track their HSA funds, while saving them the trouble of waiting for reimbursement checks. This, in turn, makes CDHPs more acceptable to …

Bowing to the pressures created by the consumer-driven healthcare trend, the Tennessee Hospital Association has created a website offering service prices for most of its 136 member hospitals. The site, which draws on data reported to the state from October 2003 to September 2004, list average prices for common procedures. HCA hospitals aren't included in the tally, but the site does link to HCA's own price disclosure sites. (HCA recently decided to disclose prices for common procedures at …

New research funded by pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts has concluded that consumers give up medications rather than switch from brand-name drugs to generics. The study, which looked at healthcare claims for two national employers, compared prescription claims for the first nine months of 2005 versus the first nine months of 2006. The employers had kicked off CDHPs for their employees in January 2006, with one of the two employers seeing more than 20 percent of employees enroll. …

New research suggests that women with high-deductible plans may face significantly higher expenses than men, due primarily to routine screenings and services such as mammograms, cervical cancer vaccines, Pap tests, birth control and pregnancy care. According to the research, which was published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, men under 45 years old paid less than $500 per year, but women spent more than $1,200 based on 2006 dollars. Harvard Medical School researchers …

The Texas Hospital Association (THA) has become the latest industry group to promote price transparency and allow for comparison shopping, joining Wisconsin, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, New Hampshire and several other states with similar initiatives in place. To accomplish this objective, the THA has launched a new site, Texas PricePoint, which pulls together charge data on the most common inpatient services provided by Texas hospitals. …

A group of new bills currently progressing in the Pennsylvania state legislature could change the way the state's consumers shop for healthcare. The bills, which are part of an overall health reform push by Gov. Ed Rendell (D), include a measure requiring the state's pharmacies to submit their retail prices on the 150 most popular drugs to the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council. This measure would also call for the state to launch a hospital payment registry, which would …