
When considering the family budget and being a good parent, providing quality healthcare at a reasonable price is right up there with the mortgage payment, car payments and college tuition. Consumer driven healthcare is a movement in the United States. Consumer Driven Healthcare relies on a free-market approach to control costs through consumer choice, with employees assuming greater ownership for their healthcare decisions and related finances. Consumer driven healthcare is about changing employee behavior. Consumer driven healthcare is just talk and will fail unless we want to walk the walk. In simple words, the hope for consumer driven healthcare comes from the simple notion that putting responsibility for expenses and decisions back into the hands of the consumer will result in more rational utilization of resources. So while the healthcare debate heats up in Washington, across the state capitals, in corporate boardrooms, on the campaign trail and on TV, some of us folks are trying to make sense of “consumer driven healthcare”.
Consumer-Driven Healthcare also referred to as “CDH”, is a type of health plan that gives members more choice and flexibility in making health benefits decisions and more control over their health benefits dollars. Consumer-driven care will change the way your hospital does business. Consumers will increasingly take on the responsibility of managing their own health benefits, in many cases through individually held health savings accounts that will give them greater freedom to determine when and how they spend their healthcare dollars. Consumer-driven healthcare is defined as a system where consumers, not the employer or insurance provider, determine how and where to spend their healthcare dollars. However, consumer-driven healthcare (CDH) can result in savings and greater flexibility for consumers of all kinds. The merits of various types of consumer-driven programs are being hotly debated, but the reality is that CDHC simultaneously creates both a consumer “movement” as their financial responsibility and involvement in their care choices increase, and a consumer experience.
If healthcare were consumer-driven, “maintenance” prescriptions (medications you need over long periods of time) wouldn’t require complicated pre-authorization forms from your doctor, which are usually rejected the first time around. If healthcare were consumer-driven, basic allergy medications like Zyrtec wouldn’t be so hard to come by, and wouldn’t cost $25 a bottle out-of-pocket. If healthcare were consumer-driven, patients wouldn’t be forced to choose between complex HMO, PPO, and POS plan options that leave a loophole for various “medical groups” to decline responsibility for specific doctor’s office visits or treatments (sticking the befuddled patient with the full bill). “Consumers have choice in every area of their lives, except healthcare,” he stated. Nearly 85 percent of consumers responding to a new survey said that they believed hospitals and doctors should be required to disclose their prices.
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