Getting On The Soapbox: Views Of An Innovator In Consumer-Directed Care

Abstract

Consumer-directed health care (CDHC) is often thought of solely as a demand-side solution to the health care cost crisis. One could argue that CDHC is a financing and service revolution that seeks to develop more-efficient financial services products with consumer information to bring about market-based changes in the U.S. health care system. Developing a balanced review of CDHC's potential will help construct future implementations of consumer-directed products and services and advance policy recommendations that improve the cost and quality of health care services.

The Impact of Consumer-Directed Health Plans and Patient Socioeconomic Status on Physician Recommendations for Colorectal Cancer Screening

“…[1][2][3] Enrollment in consumer-directed health plans (CDHPs), which combine high-deductible insurance products with medical savings accounts, has grown to 6.1 million Americans in 2008. 4 Despite this rising enrollment, little evidence exists on how CDHPs affect physicians' treatment recommendations and quality of care.…”

Consumer-directed health care: promise or puffery?

“…Another respondent, Tony Miller, a cofounder of Definity Health, one of the earliest consumer-directed health plans, rejects the view that CDHC is just a way of shifting costs to consumers and helping them to make ‘rational economic decisions’ (Miller, 2006: w549). It is instead ‘about a change in the way we are going to finance our consumption of health care services so that users of those services have more control over how the dollars are spent’.…”