Health Savings Accounts: Will They Impact Markets?

2007 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 455-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
David P. Richardson ◽  
Jason S. Seligman
Keyword(s):  
Health Savings Accounts ◽  
Savings Accounts

Restraining the Health Care Consumer

2006 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 501-528
Author(s):  
Beatrix Hoffman
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Insurance ◽  
Medical Insurance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Health Coverage ◽  
Health Savings Accounts ◽  
Savings Accounts ◽  
Deductible Insurance ◽  
Health Care Consumer ◽  
History Of

Health insurance with high deductibles is an important feature of the Bush administration's health savings accounts initiative. A similar type of insurance, known as major medical, was the most common type of health coverage in the United States from the 1950s through the 1970s. This article traces the history of cost sharing in health insurance from its origins in insurers' concerns about “moral hazard” to the heyday of major medical insurance to the temporary comeback of first-dollar coverage during the era of managed care. Proponents of deductibles and co-payments, today and in the past, have argued that they bring down costs by forcing consumers to make more careful health care choices. The history of major medical insurance, however, shows that high-deductible insurance failed to curb medical inflation and also hurt consumers who expected their coverage to protect their incomes from the costs of sickness and injury.

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