Employers curbing health insurance costs by encouraging employees to take charge of their own health

• Two newspapers recently examined efforts by employers and health plans to control health care costs by offering incentives to workers and members.
• The Boston Globe on Thursday examined consumer-directed health plans, "the next new thing employers and insurers are pushing" to help reduce health care costs.
• Such health plans are intended to increase members' involvement in health care decisions by increasing their awareness of the cost of health care services and offering incentives for controlling health care costs along with higher out-of-pocket expenses than other health plans.
• About one million of the 160 million U.S. residents with employer-based health coverage currently are members of consumer-directed health plans, and a Kaiser Family Foundation survey conducted last year found that half of all employers with 5,000 or more workers said they likely would introduce such health plans as an option for health care coverage in the next two years.
• PacifiCare pays about $15 every two weeks to workers who report healthy eating habits and exercise in an online diary and offers rewards for participation in classes to stop smoking or to manage chronic diseases.
• Soon, those that don't do this may have to pay more or risk a penalty."
• However, some workers rights groups have said these programs violate workers' privacy rights.
• Mark Rothstein, director of the Institute for Bioethics, Health Policy and Law at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, said penalties would be "a tax that some of the lower-paid workers perhaps can't afford" (Eunjung Cha, Washington Post, 2/20).