Health insurance choices
During the campaign, you may have heard a candidate or two saying that all Americans should have access to the same health insurance program that members of Congress have, who can pick from a range of different plans. Well, as a fed, I do have access to the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. Our "open season," when we get to pick our plan for the next year, has started and I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by it.
This year, the Office of Personnel Management is heavily pushing the new "consumer-driven" options, which combine fairly high levels of cost-sharing and deductibles with health savings accounts that allow you to set-aside money for health expenses pre-tax. They differ from the more well-known Flexible Spending Accounts in that extra money isn’t lost at the end of the year, but can be carried over indefinitely. The logic is that if patients share in more of the costs of health services, they’ll shop more wisely and help keep total costs down.
Most reports that I’ve read about these plans suggest that they’re a good deal for young and generally healthy people; in fact, the main criticism I’ve heard of them is that they’ll result in adverse selection against traditional plans, by drawing healthier consumers out of the shared risk pool. But every time I try to read through the benefits description for one of these plans, my head starts to ache and my eyes refuse to focus. And I consider myself a pretty well-informed savvy consumer; if I’m having this much trouble figuring it out, I suspect that a lot of other people are too.
I therefore think I’m going to stay with the same HMO I’ve had for the past 8 years, even if I could save a little money with one of these new plans. Fundamentally, the reason is that I have enough on my plate between my job and my family and volunteering and trying to carve out a little time for personal things I enjoy like writing this blog and taking photos. I don’t need to be the "driver" of my health insurance — I’m happy to be a passenger.
