health insurance is a consumer product. Wait - health insurance, you might think? Most of us do not buy really for health insurance - you have a plan offered through work, and at most to make us a selection of some limited choices
However, as more and more people and. Companies change to the individual health insurance, quickly , the has become new consumer. And I would argue that's a good thing.
But before we get into that, let's talk about where we were having health insurance and why we on a shift more consumer-driven product. 
health insurance, an employer a
have product since the Second World War, as we talked about earlier, in the 1940s we saw the birth of employer-sponsored health insurance . After the war, the federal government was careful postwar inflation and wage controls implemented. As a concession to the working groups, the government employer except paid health benefits of wage controls and personal income tax.
This resulted in a tax benefit, the huge demand for employer-provided health insurance plans drove over the previously common individual health insurance. Employers receive a 100% tax deduction, while the benefits of federal employees were receiving free, state and city taxation.
In the 1960s, this kind financed by employer health insurance was nearly universal and. since the health insurance has been an employer product largely - shopped for and purchased by the employer
This system of health insurance works best when the employees remained with the company for an entire career, and if it is not expensive medical procedures were driving the cost of healthcare. This is no longer the case.
group health insurance costs have increased 174% since 1999 (single coverage), and companies have either dropped coverage or reduced benefits to reduce the cost. As such, many employers are Farewell to the group insurance and shift to a consumer-oriented product -. Individual Health Insurance
The Big Shift individual health insurance
in our recent book , Pilzer and Lindquist predict that in the next 10 years 100 million Americans move provided by employers individually purchased health insurance.
This is a big change. Why? On average, the individual health insurance costs offered less than employer health insurance and while individual health insurance plans are not new, there are new benefits that level the playing field. These include new advantages of the individual health insurance . Coverage for a pre-existing condition, reporting substantial health benefits and the premium tax credits
health insurance as Consumer Product
So what does this have to do with the health insurance as a consumer?
Now, the definition of a consumer product is "good or another element of the common or everyday use, usually purchased by individuals or households for private consumption."
How to see from where we have been having health insurance, it had not been a consumer product. It has been an employer product.
But the change to individual health insurance constitutes consumer back in the driving seat with the selection and purchase of health insurance. For the first time in a long time, it is to be a consumer product.
Commercially, this is a good thing.
offered with employer health insurance consumers are separated from the shopping and decision making process. This means that the majority of people, the insurance through their work get out, real consumer decisions about the cost of their care or their cover are separated. If the employees are not directly to consumers, there is no incentive for feedback or for cost control. In fact, this is one of the few reasons that health care costs continue to rise.
Just as hundreds of thousands of new users sign up for health insurance this open enrollment period, more people than ever before buying individual health insurance, health insurance is not only a new consumer product to be, it is very likely always , the consumer product for 2015.
What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the discussion.
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