The most investment and its trend

The most investment in everyone's life is health. Healthy life style and reasonable workout plans keep us in good shape. However, sooner or later, we would need to go to hospitals. Visiting hospitals has become more and more expensive. One crucial trend that is worth noticing more companies are shifting to HDHP, high deductible health plan. Experts said that this trend will last into the next decade before any sign of reverse.

HDHP refers to deductible more than $2000 for family $1000 for individual. That means expenses paid by employees and families each year is the deductible amount before their medical insurance kicks in. It has another vaguely defined name too: consumer-driven health plan. The name may be from the intention to make employees more cost sensitive. These plans are shifting to many large companies like GE. Many aren't very familiar with such plans. One indicator is that surveys show family costs indeed lowered but under the condition they don't know preventive care usually aren't included in the deductible. So it is important to understand these plans.

• For both companies and workers, premiums are substantially lower than for traditional coverage. Employers often use money saved on premiums to fund tax-free health savings accounts and similar arrangements to help workers pay for deductibles. Don't miss those HSA. 
• HDHP typically cover 100 percent of the cost of physicals and screenings
• Look for companies that can set up tax-free savings pools for patients to cover out-of-pocket costs, if it is feasible.
• HDHP families don't need to cut back on preventive care because members don’t realize the deductible didn’t apply to such visits.
•  For chronic conditions, these plans offer true catastrophic coverage on the back end. This can be a balanced point to the critics. 
• We will see more and more such plans in the future.
• You need to take care of yourself better. This is one of intents of such plans.