Some employers reward frugal choices

The third-party payer problem is an issue that has plagued healthcare for a long time. When faced with what might seem like a potentially life-altering situation and the option of low-cost and relatively unknown medical provider versus the option of a well-known but very expensive provider, patients have very little incentive to care about cost if the personal cost after insurance is the same (e.g. co-pay). Even if the final amount is different (e.g. through co-insurance), the difference might be small enough to be worthwhile to the patient and still result in a large difference to the payer. This situation has been slowly changing over the last decade, as more and more Americans have been enrolling in high-deductible plans. The Wall Street Journal published an article about some employers turning to tools to help their employees shop for care, and adding incentives for their employees to care. This move makes sense; after all, why should an individual patient restrict his or her choices only so that the employer benefits from the savings? (In theory and in aggregate, lower medical costs could mean higher wages for employees, but any individual decision is far enough removed from the employee's direct compensation that employees generally would understandably not give much consideration to the difference.)

The numbers discussed in the article seem small. Over the next several years, I suspect that an increasing number of large employers will be turning to programs similar to what was outlined to help reduce growth in medical spending.