Study: CDHPs improve health habits, lower costs

Finally, a media person -- be it editor or publisher or writer -- who gets it! As a 20-year veteran of the healthcare and industrial and sports medicine industries, health policy analyst and strategist, and medcial risk management consultant, I am aware of myriad shortcomings as regards Consumer-Directed Health Plans -- and the incentives for insurance entities to push them. I am in the process of designing and conducting a survey/ study that is 100-percent independent and free of any bias and financial conflicts of interest. My null hypothesis is congruent with this editor's commentary. FYI: I am writing a book on health costs...what the public doesn't know and has no way of knowing, is that CDHP doesn't benefit them. What is interesting about your article is that America's CDHPs do not enable persons to use monies for wellness...only for healthcare, and regardless of how healthcare industry providers and suppliers market themselves don't believe the hype: prevention is not what the healthcare system is structured for or capable of delivering. Its "prevention" is actually treatment and control. Big difference. Who pays the price? We all do, especially large employers. My independent study will not please the industry...but it will open the eyes of those who are paying the price. I applaud your outstanding perspective and lucid -- cynical yet rightly so -- account. Fighting health costs and health quality issues requires parties not unlike you and myself...able to look deeper and read between the lines, to discern usable truth from manufactured information and marketing hype.