IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/fhecpo/v13y2010i2n3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Enrollee Incentives in Consumer Directed Health Plans: Spend Now or Save for Later?

Author

Listed:
  • Feldman Roger D

    (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities)

  • Parente Stephen T

    (University of Minnesota)

Abstract

We propose a model of enrollee incentives in consumer directed health plans (CDHPs) and estimate the model with data from a large employer that offered a CDHP in addition to two traditional health insurance plans. In the CDHP a portion of the enrollee's pretax compensation is placed in an account that can be used to pay for out-of-pocket medical expenses or rolled over to the next year. In a multi-period model, healthy employees should save part of the account to pay for future medical contingencies. We measured health status by the employee's predicted medical spending in the year prior to the CDHP offering. We found that healthy CDHP enrollees tended to spend less in three post-enrollment years than a comparison group of healthy employees who elected to keep their traditional health insurance coverage. However, CDHP enrollees with high predicted spending--a measure of poorer health--spent more than their comparison group of traditional health insurance enrollees in the following three years.

Suggested Citation

  • Feldman Roger D & Parente Stephen T, 2010. "Enrollee Incentives in Consumer Directed Health Plans: Spend Now or Save for Later?," Forum for Health Economics & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 13(2), pages 1-20, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:fhecpo:v:13:y:2010:i:2:n:3
    DOI: 10.2202/1558-9544.1182
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.2202/1558-9544.1182
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2202/1558-9544.1182?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cardon, James H. & Showalter, Mark H., 2001. "An examination of flexible spending accounts," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(6), pages 935-954, November.
    2. Keeler, Emmett B & Newhouse, Joseph P & Phelps, C E, 1977. "Deductibles and the Demand for Medical Care Services: The Theory of a Consumer Facing a Variable Price Schedule under Uncertainty," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(3), pages 641-655, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Haviland Amelia M & Sood Neeraj & McDevitt Roland & Marquis M Susan, 2011. "How Do Consumer-Directed Health Plans Affect Vulnerable Populations?," Forum for Health Economics & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 14(1), pages 1-25, April.
    2. Deborah Peikes & Stacy Dale & Eric Lundquist & Janice Genevro & David Meyers, 2011. "Building the Evidence Base for the Medical Home: What Sample and Sample Size Do Studies Need?," Mathematica Policy Research Reports 5814eb8219b24982af7f7536c, Mathematica Policy Research.
    3. Hao Yu, 2017. "China’s medical savings accounts: an analysis of the price elasticity of demand for health care," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 18(6), pages 773-785, July.
    4. Bryan Dowd & Roger Feldman, 2012. "Competition and Health Plan Choice," Chapters, in: Andrew M. Jones (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Health Economics, Second Edition, chapter 13, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Sood Neeraj & Wagner Zachary & Huckfeldt Peter & Haviland Amelia M., 2013. "Price Shopping in Consumer-Directed Health Plans," Forum for Health Economics & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 16(1), pages 35-53, March.
    6. repec:mpr:mprres:7219 is not listed on IDEAS

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Paul Contoyannis & Jeremiah Hurley & Paul Grootendorst & Sung‐Hee Jeon & Robyn Tamblyn, 2005. "Estimating the price elasticity of expenditure for prescription drugs in the presence of non‐linear price schedules: an illustration from Quebec, Canada," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(9), pages 909-923, September.
    2. Ed Westerhout & Kees Folmer, 2007. "Co-payment systems in health care; between moral hazard and risk reduction," CPB Discussion Paper 78.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    3. Schreyögg, Jonas, 2003. "Medical savings accounts: Eine internationale Bestandsaufnahme des Konzeptes der Gesundheitssparkonten," Discussion Papers 2003/11, Technische Universität Berlin, School of Economics and Management.
    4. Charles E. Phelps, 1984. "Taxing Health Insurance: How Much Is Enough?," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 3(2), pages 47-54, December.
    5. Stefan Boes & Michael Gerfin, 2016. "Does Full Insurance Increase the Demand for Health Care?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(11), pages 1483-1496, November.
    6. Hayen, Arthur P. & Klein, Tobias J. & Salm, Martin, 2021. "Does the framing of patient cost-sharing incentives matter? the effects of deductibles vs. no-claim refunds," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    7. Harri Sintonen & Timo Maljanen, 1995. "Explaining the utilisation of dental care. Experiences from the finnish dental market," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 4(6), pages 453-466, November.
    8. Niels Skipper, 2010. "On Utilization and Stockpiling of Prescription Drugs when Co-payments Increase: Heterogeneity across Types of Drugs," Economics Working Papers 2010-12, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    9. Michael Smart & Mark Stabile, 2005. "Tax credits, insurance, and the use of medical care," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 38(2), pages 345-365, May.
    10. Chad D. Meyerhoefer & Samuel H. Zuvekas & Richard Manski, 2014. "The Demand For Preventive And Restorative Dental Services," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(1), pages 14-32, January.
    11. Niels Skipper, 2013. "On The Demand For Prescription Drugs: Heterogeneity In Price Responses," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(7), pages 857-869, July.
    12. Buitrago, Giancarlo & Rodríguez-Lesmes, Paul Andrés & Serna, Natalia & Vera-Hernández, Marcos, 2023. "The Role of Hospital Networks in Individual Mortality," Documentos de Trabajo 20945, Universidad del Rosario.
    13. Boone, Jan & Remmerswaal, Minke, 2024. "A structural microsimulation model for demand-side cost-sharing in healthcare," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    14. Ethan M. J. Lieber, 2017. "Does It Pay to Know Prices in Health Care?," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 154-179, February.
    15. Westerhout, Ed & Folmer, Kees, 2018. "The Effects of Capping Co-Insurance Payments," Discussion Paper 2018-050, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    16. John F. Scoggins & Daniel A. Weinberg, 2017. "Healthcare Coinsurance Elasticity Coefficient Estimation Using Monthly Cross‐sectional, Time‐series Claims Data," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(6), pages 795-801, June.
    17. Toshiaki Iizuka & Hitoshi Shigeoka, 2018. "Free for Children? Patient Cost-sharing and Healthcare Utilization," NBER Working Papers 25306, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Norihiro Komura & Shun-ichiro Bessho, 2022. "The Longer-term Impact of Coinsurance for the Elderly - Evidence from High-access Case -," KIER Working Papers 1074, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.
    19. Lucien Gardiol & Pierre-Yves Geoffard & Chantal Grandchamp, 2005. "Separating selection and incentive effects in health insurance," PSE Working Papers halshs-00590713, HAL.
    20. Simonsen, Marianne & Skipper, Lars & Skipper, Niels & Christensen, Anne Illemann, 2021. "Spot price biases in non-linear health insurance contracts," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:fhecpo:v:13:y:2010:i:2:n:3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyterbrill.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.