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Since their creation in 2003, health savings accounts (HSA) have proven to be an attractive option for health plan enrollees who are also enrolled in a high-deductible health plan (HDHP). In the past decade alone, the number of HSAs has grown from 6 ...

If you are like many American healthcare consumers, you are enrolled in a calendar-based high deductible health insurance plan that resets its cost sharing requirements at the end of each year. This means that any progress you made towards reaching y...

If you find yourself uninsured and need medical care, what should you do? If you are reading this, you have taken a good first step. This post is a condensed step-by-step approach to shopping for necessary medical care if you are uninsured.1) Did you...

This post examines four challenges to healthcare price transparency. Challenge #1 - Patients are often unaware of existing price transparency tools or do not use them. However, evidence suggests that most individuals do not seek pricing information...

Healthcare is expensive. So are cell phones, airplane tickets and automobiles. But what makes healthcare different from these three commonly purchased consumer items?Unlike healthcare, consumers making purchasing decisions for an iPhone, a plane tick...

With the increasing availability of information regarding healthcare price and quality, you may be wondering how to use this information to effectively shop for healthcare. This post examines this question and provides you with a step-by-step approac...

Effectively shopping for healthcare is a novel concept for those who have never had to pay for medical expenses directly out-of-pocket. With the continued growth of high-deductible health insurance plans and their considerable up-front cost sharing r...

Our previous post assessed the compliance of hospitals in the Richmond, VA Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) with the Price Transparency of Hospital Charges Final Rule that became effective on January 1, 2021. As indicated in the description of the...

With the aim of promoting price transparency in healthcare, the Federal Government issued final regulations on November 27, 2019 requiring hospitals to publicly post price information for their healthcare services. To develop a preliminary regional a...

The concept of actively shopping for healthcare services is relatively new to the current generation of consumers. Health insurance plan participants have traditionally not been exposed to significant cost sharing responsibilities and have correspond...

High-deductible health plans are defined by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as any plan with a deductible of at least $1,400 for an individual and $2,800 for a family. In addition to these deductible figures, yearly out-of-pocket expenses (deducti...

What if you cannot pay a medical bill? Fortunately, federal consumer protection laws offer some measure of protection. In addition, medical debt, in recognition of the unpredictability of necessary medical care, is treated more leniently than regular...

Unexpected medical expenses happen. You may have a high-deductible health plan or short-term medical insurance where the benefit kicks in after you pay thousands of dollars in up-front out-of-pocket costs. Or you may be uninsured and do not qualify f...