With health insurance premiums up 9 percent this year, many Georgians are choosing policies requiring higher deductibles. To some physicians, that’s just bad medicine. Others call it a bitter but necessary pill.
“A high deductible is a surefire way to keep people from getting the medical care they need, and in the long run to increase health care costs overall,” said Dr. Daniel Blumenthal, associate dean for community health at the Morehouse School of Medicine.
Though such plans frequently exempt preventive care from deductible limits, they discourage maintenance treatments for chronic conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Blumenthal said. Those conditions are epidemic in Georgia.
However, in the battle to tame runaway medical costs, high-deductible policies also have an upside, said Bill Custer, a professor at the Institute for Health Administration at Georgia State University. It’s that “consumers [with high deductibles] have some skin in the game,” he said. In other words, they make their treatment decisions with a greater awareness of the actual cost of care.
In Wednesday's newspaper, the AJC takes a deep look at the many ways higher deductibles are being felt by Georgia's business owners and employees. It's a story you'll get only by picking up a copy of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution or logging on to the paper's iPad app. Subscribe today.
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