Home » News » Health
May 26. 2012 8:51PM
-- Ask for generic rather than name brand medications.
-- Use an urgent care center rather than an emergency room when possible.
-- Sign up for a gym membership and smoking cessation, especially if your health plan provides a financial incentive.
-- Talk with your doctor about treatment alternatives
-- Shop around for prices. Compare price tags for procedures at health care providers using the state's website, nhhealthcost.org/costByProcedure.aspx.
-- See whether your insurer offers financial incentives to choose a lower-cost provider.
-- Check if your employer offers a health savings account that you can use pre-tax dollars to pay insurance premiums or deductible costs.
Chart source:Sources: UnionLeader.com survey; Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Hampshire; NH Insurance Department
High costs of medical care put NH patients on alert
Health care budget tips
-- Eat healthy and exercise regularly.-- Ask for generic rather than name brand medications.
-- Use an urgent care center rather than an emergency room when possible.
-- Sign up for a gym membership and smoking cessation, especially if your health plan provides a financial incentive.
-- Talk with your doctor about treatment alternatives
-- Shop around for prices. Compare price tags for procedures at health care providers using the state's website, nhhealthcost.org/costByProcedure.aspx.
-- See whether your insurer offers financial incentives to choose a lower-cost provider.
-- Check if your employer offers a health savings account that you can use pre-tax dollars to pay insurance premiums or deductible costs.
Chart source:Sources: UnionLeader.com survey; Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Hampshire; NH Insurance Department
Robert Tarr believes his wife, Pauline, would be alive today if she hadn't regularly skipped days taking medication to treat her hyper-thyroid condition because she couldn't afford her pills.
Her death in January has left the Manchester father of four with an unpaid $15,000 hospital bill for his wife's time in intensive care. He still forgoes his own doctor visits because his family budget, funded mainly by Social Security disability, can't absorb the $110 it would cost for his round-trip cab fare to his Bedford doctor and for the remainder of his doctor bill not covered by Medicare.
“It comes down to putting food on the table, paying rent or utilities or paying for your medication,” Tarr, 43, said Thursday.
In New Hampshire, there were 134,000 residents younger than 65 without health insurance in 2010, according to U.S. Census figures. Thousands more were under-insured or couldn't afford rising insurance co-pays and deductibles.
New Hampshire had the highest insurance premium cost for a family-size plan among the 50 states, at $15,204. Only the District of Columbia was higher, by $2, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit foundation focusing on major health care issues. Its figures represented what the employer and employee paid combined.
Alexander Feldvebel, the state's deputy insurance commissioner, said a recent study released by his department showed employees picking up more of their health care costs in 2010 compared with the previous year as employers traded down coverage.
“The real surprising thing is that in that one year, the value of health benefits that people were buying went down by 10 percent; that was a huge drop,” Feldvebel said. “To keep their premiums affordable, virtually all the increase in cost was being absorbed by buying less coverage.
“To go along with that, the other very interesting component is the per-person service use — the actual health care received with people with health coverage — declined by 2.2 percent,” Feldvebel said. “People with less coverage are going to the doctor less.”
As people see their deductibles increase, workers are more watchful over their spending.
“What we're seeing now is consumers are getting skin in the game in a big way, and it may not have the impact that was assumed in that the researcher who looked at the data for us found that the decline in health care utilization included both cost-effective care as well as what you might consider ineffective care,” he said.
“It's not like now that consumers have a lot of skin in the game that they're cutting back on the frills,” he said. “Apparently, they're cutting back on care they really need as well as care you could label as ineffective or not effective.”
Down the road
Cutting back on routine care and screenings could lead to higher medical bills later on, Feldvebel said.
Fran Tishkevich of Manchester said her insurance deductible at her Massachusetts college increased over the past two years, leading her to scrutinize her expenditures more.
Last fall, her doctor suggested she get an MRI, a procedure costing more than $1,000 that she called “pretty pricey.”
“I didn't think I needed it,” she said. “I think a lot of test screenings are way overprescribed.”
She settled on an X-ray for less than $100, even though her doctor made an accurate diagnosis before the X-ray was taken.
“I think I made a good choice,” Tishkevich said. “The system is overused, the technology is overused, the pharmaceuticals are overused and that's all driving up the costs, so in my mind, is it necessary? Is there a cheaper alternative before you agree? I research on my own.”
Denise McDonough, regional vice president of sales at Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in New Hampshire, said the insurer is encouraging its customers to become more involved in their health care decisions.
“This is not about contradicting your doctor,” she said. “It's about having a dialogue with your doctor in a way people probably haven't had over the years.”
An Anthem program, which offers financial incentives to people choosing more cost-effective places for medical treatment, has been extended to more than 250 employers and about 53,000 members in the state.
“If they choose to exercise that option of a lower cost provider, they are provided incentives in the form of a check, which is paid for by their employer,” McDonough said. “Their employer is seeing the value of lower claims cost.”
McDonough said the popular family plan — with a $3,000 deductible for each person, capped at $9,000 — costs $1,386 a month for the premium. That premium cost, on average, is roughly evenly shared between the employer and the worker, she said.
At $693 a month, a worker would pay $8,316 plus up to $9,000 more in deductibles a year, surpassing $17,000 a year. She said most employers cover a portion of their workers' deductible cost, generally 50 percent.
More procedures
Lisa Guertin, president of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in New Hampshire, pointed out that Anthem in 2010 was billed for $60 million for five services that weren't in existence in 2004 or were in their infancy, including gastric bypass surgery and stereotactic radiation, which helps treat tumors.
“When we react to the costs of health insurance being so high, medicine doesn't stand still,” Guertin said. “New treatments, new technologies, new diagnostics, and some of them have pretty big price tags with them.”
Anthem is the state's largest private insurer, with 277,946 members or 43.5 percent market share, in 2010, according to the state insurance department.
A spokesman for Cigna, the state's second-largest private insurer, declined to discuss health care trends or the state's report, citing “competitive reasons.”
For the Tarr family, federal Medicaid dollars have helped cover some of the family medical bills.
His three teenage children, younger than 19, are enrolled in the state's “Healthy Kids Gold” program, which pays for health care for more than 78,000 children in low-income families, a 19 percent increase from four years ago before the recession. Last year, his teenage son, Robert, had his tonsils removed in outpatient surgery, and Tarr didn't have to pay a penny.
“If the state had not been able to pay for that, it would have been on my head to come up with the money,” he said. Tarr said he wished he could pay his way.
“I'm not trying to put the bill on someone else's back,” he said. “I would pay if I could.”
Her death in January has left the Manchester father of four with an unpaid $15,000 hospital bill for his wife's time in intensive care. He still forgoes his own doctor visits because his family budget, funded mainly by Social Security disability, can't absorb the $110 it would cost for his round-trip cab fare to his Bedford doctor and for the remainder of his doctor bill not covered by Medicare.
“It comes down to putting food on the table, paying rent or utilities or paying for your medication,” Tarr, 43, said Thursday.
In New Hampshire, there were 134,000 residents younger than 65 without health insurance in 2010, according to U.S. Census figures. Thousands more were under-insured or couldn't afford rising insurance co-pays and deductibles.
New Hampshire had the highest insurance premium cost for a family-size plan among the 50 states, at $15,204. Only the District of Columbia was higher, by $2, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit foundation focusing on major health care issues. Its figures represented what the employer and employee paid combined.
Alexander Feldvebel, the state's deputy insurance commissioner, said a recent study released by his department showed employees picking up more of their health care costs in 2010 compared with the previous year as employers traded down coverage.
“The real surprising thing is that in that one year, the value of health benefits that people were buying went down by 10 percent; that was a huge drop,” Feldvebel said. “To keep their premiums affordable, virtually all the increase in cost was being absorbed by buying less coverage.
“To go along with that, the other very interesting component is the per-person service use — the actual health care received with people with health coverage — declined by 2.2 percent,” Feldvebel said. “People with less coverage are going to the doctor less.”
As people see their deductibles increase, workers are more watchful over their spending.
“What we're seeing now is consumers are getting skin in the game in a big way, and it may not have the impact that was assumed in that the researcher who looked at the data for us found that the decline in health care utilization included both cost-effective care as well as what you might consider ineffective care,” he said.
“It's not like now that consumers have a lot of skin in the game that they're cutting back on the frills,” he said. “Apparently, they're cutting back on care they really need as well as care you could label as ineffective or not effective.”
Down the road
Cutting back on routine care and screenings could lead to higher medical bills later on, Feldvebel said.
Fran Tishkevich of Manchester said her insurance deductible at her Massachusetts college increased over the past two years, leading her to scrutinize her expenditures more.
Last fall, her doctor suggested she get an MRI, a procedure costing more than $1,000 that she called “pretty pricey.”
“I didn't think I needed it,” she said. “I think a lot of test screenings are way overprescribed.”
She settled on an X-ray for less than $100, even though her doctor made an accurate diagnosis before the X-ray was taken.
“I think I made a good choice,” Tishkevich said. “The system is overused, the technology is overused, the pharmaceuticals are overused and that's all driving up the costs, so in my mind, is it necessary? Is there a cheaper alternative before you agree? I research on my own.”
Denise McDonough, regional vice president of sales at Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in New Hampshire, said the insurer is encouraging its customers to become more involved in their health care decisions.
“This is not about contradicting your doctor,” she said. “It's about having a dialogue with your doctor in a way people probably haven't had over the years.”
An Anthem program, which offers financial incentives to people choosing more cost-effective places for medical treatment, has been extended to more than 250 employers and about 53,000 members in the state.
“If they choose to exercise that option of a lower cost provider, they are provided incentives in the form of a check, which is paid for by their employer,” McDonough said. “Their employer is seeing the value of lower claims cost.”
McDonough said the popular family plan — with a $3,000 deductible for each person, capped at $9,000 — costs $1,386 a month for the premium. That premium cost, on average, is roughly evenly shared between the employer and the worker, she said.
At $693 a month, a worker would pay $8,316 plus up to $9,000 more in deductibles a year, surpassing $17,000 a year. She said most employers cover a portion of their workers' deductible cost, generally 50 percent.
More procedures
Lisa Guertin, president of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in New Hampshire, pointed out that Anthem in 2010 was billed for $60 million for five services that weren't in existence in 2004 or were in their infancy, including gastric bypass surgery and stereotactic radiation, which helps treat tumors.
“When we react to the costs of health insurance being so high, medicine doesn't stand still,” Guertin said. “New treatments, new technologies, new diagnostics, and some of them have pretty big price tags with them.”
Anthem is the state's largest private insurer, with 277,946 members or 43.5 percent market share, in 2010, according to the state insurance department.
A spokesman for Cigna, the state's second-largest private insurer, declined to discuss health care trends or the state's report, citing “competitive reasons.”
For the Tarr family, federal Medicaid dollars have helped cover some of the family medical bills.
His three teenage children, younger than 19, are enrolled in the state's “Healthy Kids Gold” program, which pays for health care for more than 78,000 children in low-income families, a 19 percent increase from four years ago before the recession. Last year, his teenage son, Robert, had his tonsils removed in outpatient surgery, and Tarr didn't have to pay a penny.
“If the state had not been able to pay for that, it would have been on my head to come up with the money,” he said. Tarr said he wished he could pay his way.
“I'm not trying to put the bill on someone else's back,” he said. “I would pay if I could.”
