According to 2007 Employer Health Benefits Survey released recently by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research and Educational Trust, the annual family health insurance premiums now stand at average $12,106. Premiums for employer sponsored health insurance have come down to 6.1% in 2007 as compared to 7.7% reported increase in 2006, but still higher than the increase in worker’s wages (3.7%) or the overall inflation rate (2.6%).
Its a fact that advances in medicine and medical technology have made medical treatment more expensive and people in developed countries are living longer. A large group of senior citizens are coming up steadily requiring more medical care than younger generation.
These factors cause an increase in the cost of health insurance including increase in Social Security cost in the U.S. Its evident that unhealthy food habits, insufficient exercise, obesity, street drugs, excessive intake of alcohol, smoking, inadequate health-care professionals in rural areas have added fuel in increasing health insurance cost.
The only alternative, however in bring down the health insurance cost is to do the opposites with regular exercising, intaking healthy food or avoiding junk food, avoiding addictive, checking alcohol & smoking etc. A healthier lifestyle can protect you from most of the diseases and give you some relief in lowering the increasing cost of health-care.
An idea of Consumer Driven Health-care Plan encourages you (the Americans) to go for buying high-deductible lower-premium insurance option for getting tax benefits and taking advantage of Health Incentive Account (HIA) you can manage things nice that means if you have dollars in your HIA, you can utilize them to offset some of your out-of-pocket expenses.
Now,what does Consumer Driven Health Care (CDHC) mean? Well, by adapting to CDHC you are allowed to participate into health insurance plans through Health Savings Accounts(HSAs), Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRAs) or similar plans to pay routine health-care expenses. While high-deductible health insurance policy protects you from catastrophic medical expenses. After-all self health insurance is not a bad idea.
High-deductible health insurance policy is cheaper than the low-deductible one, but you have to have enough savings to deal with the small expenses up to the deductible amount. Now,why HSA? Because its a tax-advantaged medical savings account available in the U.S. who opts for HDHP.
If you utilize the fund to pay for qualified medical expenses, you are exempted from tax liability. But non-medical expenses are subject to IRA guide-lines. Whereas HRAs are partially self-funded medical insurance plans with special tax advantages. In partial self-funded program,your employer pays a predetermined portion of medical claim with a cap or limit.