Podcast Center
Video Center
Webcasts
Resource Center
Events
June 14, 2012 at 09:15 AM
Consumers who have traditional health coverage say they’re having more problems with getting care; consumers with health savings account (HSA) or health reimbursement arrangement (HRA) plans say they’re having fewer problems.
Paul Fronstin, an analyst at the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), has published data on the health account effect in a report on trends in U.S. health care access.
Fronstin found that consumers in health account plans are the only ones who seemed to be having better luck with care in 2011 than in 2010, and that the consumers seeing the most improvement are those at employers that contribute $1,000 or more per year to their health accounts.
Fronstin based the paper on data from one set of surveys conducted from 2005 to 2007 and another set conducted from 2008 to 2011. Each survey sample included about 1,000 privately insured U.S. adults ages 21 to 64.
Researchers divided the survey participants into three categories: Those with traditional, low-deductible health insurance; those with high-deductible coverage and no HSA or HRA; and those with both high-deductible coverage and health accounts.
EBRI measured health care access problems by asking participants whether they had delayed or avoided getting medical care due to cost. EBRI also asked the participants whether they had failed to fill a prescription because of cost or skipped doses to make the medication last longer.
Participants with traditional insurance were doing about the same in 2011 as in previous years, but a little worse than in 2010.
The percentage of those participants reporting access problems increased to 31% in 2011, from 28% in 2010. The percentage reporting problems was up from 29% in 2005.
