Almost 70 percent of U.S. consumers believe they have little to no impact on reducing their own health care costs, according to a recent health care reform report.
Data collected from more than 1,000 consumers from Chadwick Martin Bailey and South Street Strategy Group found 75 percent of consumers see health insurance companies as responsible for lowering health costs. Forty-six percent believe government agencies should take on the task.
"The confusion around health reform is both an opportunity and a challenge for insurers to take a leadership role and become educators and trusted advisors for consumers to turn to," says Mark Carr, managing partner of South Street Strategy Group. "This is just the first of many challenges health reform will pose for carriers. As reform shifts a significant portion of the insurance market from a wholesale to a retail market, many insurers, who are largely B-to-B marketers, will need to develop new, more differentiated value propositions and go-to-market strategies."
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While one-third of consumers consider themselves knowledgeable about health reform, 19 percent admitted they don't know much at all. Even so, most people believe that reform will have an impact on their lives with 35 percent expecting a major impact on them or their family, 39 percent expecting a small impact, and 18 percent unsure of the impact they should expect.
Tim Lee, principal and consulting actuary in the Houston office of the consulting firm Milliman, tells American Medical News it's possible consumers believe insurers are going to be the best reference to explain changes. And there could be a few explanations why people are saying insurers should take more responsibility for cutting health costs:
"One is that they may remember insurers' success at cutting costs in the heyday of managed care in the 1990s, and they are willing to see some of those methods return.
"Lee said consumers will require a great deal of education to remain open to changes that might keep them from seeing the doctor of their choice or create more hoops for their doctors to jump through.
"'Ultimately, it's going to be up to the doctor, the hospital and the consumer to control the cost,' he said.
"But it might be giving the public too much credit to think they are ready for insurers to bring back tightly managed care, Lee said. It's possible that consumers are considering only their own insurance premiums when it comes to health care costs: 'What they may be thinking is, 'Health care costs are manifested in my premium rate … so clearly the health insurance company must be responsible.' "
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