Will Politicians Stop Patients from Reforming Health Care?

While state and federal politicians agitate to change the way Government controls health care, patients are reforming health care themselves, thanks to previous reforms that allowed them to take more control of their health-care dollars.

Although this started in the 1990s, with Health Reimbursement Arrangements and Flexible Spending Accounts, patients' ability to reform American health care really took off with the introduction of Health Savings Accounts in January 2004.

Greg Scandlen has just written a compelling review of the evidence of these reforms, especially the last five years of HSAs. 20% of privately insured American households now have a "consumer-directed" health plan, which incorporates one of these tools.

One of the "questionables" is how providers and payers would respond to patients taking control of more of their health-care spending. Originally, they were hopeless: unable and/or unwilling to disclose prices or simplify billing and payment.

But now we learn that hospitals are taking the initiative to discuss billing and pricing with patients before scheduled surgeries, and that at least one insurer has figured out how to charge fixed prices for "episodes of care" - prompted by brokers who were sorting this out for patients.

Now I learn that an entire conference has been scheduled for providers and payers to discuss how to simplify payments from patients who control their own health-care dollars. Topics include "patient-friendly billing" and "payment kiosks & patient portals".

Reform is happening - but it's being driven by patients, providers, payers, and most importantly entrepreneurs who are working around the health-care mess the politicians have created.
Let's not let politicians posing as "reformers" stop what they're achieving.