Our Newsletters/Blog
Health Care Literacy- We're All Confused; July, 2010
It wasn’t too long ago that HMOs entered the market as the new savior to fix our growing health care cost crisis. HMO sales reps blanketed the health care landscape with the promises of “no co-pays, no deductibles, and you’ll never see a bill.” Consumers didn’t need to be engaged. As long as they followed the directions of their primary care doctor, health care was cheap (low co-pays), covered more services, and was painless most of the time (except for the pesky “gatekeeper”). A significant portion of the insured population moved to this new idea in a relatively short period of time.
How things have changed. HMOs helped a little but they didn’t solve the cost problem. Consumers didn’t like the gatekeeper or the medical management arrangements. Most of the legacy HMOs have merged, melded, or changed. Now, we’re asking consumers to “take responsibility” to help fix our health care cost crisis. Now we’re asking them to get engaged. Consumers are now funding a lot more of their medical expenses than in the early HMO days. They are now expected to navigate a very complex and demanding health care structure on their own. They are being asked to “get healthy” and quit contributing to the escalating costs. And, they are expected to do this with an industry that hasn’t always scored stellar ratings in the trust and communication categories.
Less than 25% of the population understands the health care system today1. This number will likely go down substantially with the implementation of the recent health reform legislation. This lack of understanding adds real costs and inefficiencies to an already costly system (not to mention the significant and avoidable emotional cost that goes along with it).
Improving the “health care literacy” of our population is going to be a critical component to changing the trajectory we are on today. Participants are going to need to know what they are expected to do. Health care is going to need to communicate more clearly than it ever has if the consumer is ever going to get engaged and make the decisions they will need to make. You can write all of the laws you want, but if we’re ever going to solve the cost problem we have in health care, it is going to need to communicate better than it does today so all stakeholders understand the roles they are expected to play.
