Healthcare – Consumer Directed Health Plans aka High Deductible Health Plan

Write a memo from the perspective of the Vice President for Human Resources of your employer.

Reminders:

1. All assignments *must* include relevant information for changes that will occur, or have occurred, in the insurance market, including the Affordable Care Act (Health Care Reform), and citing evidence of trends and economic explanations for them to support your reasoning. This should include the vocabulary and concepts that we discuss in each class.
2. The five-page length for each memo uses 1 ½ spacing, Times Roman font, 12 pitch. Only text is counted in the 5 pages, all figures, charts, tables or other material are to be included in and referenced as Appendices.

Consumer Directed Health Plans, also known as High Deductible Health Plans.

Issues to address / questions to answer:

(1) Explain this “new” type of insurance product to the senior management team and relate it to the employees where you work.

(2) Why are these types of plans attracting such attention now?

(3) What are they intended to achieve and how?

(4) What are the risks of these plans – that is, what are their downside(s), are there possible unintended consequences?
(5) What are the available options to address the high deductibles? Which would work best (and why) and which would likely fail (and why)?

(6) Are there any services that you might / would exclude from the deductible? Why?