Because of rising premiums, employers are investigating new health insurance approaches that maintain workers' broad choice of providers while raising awareness of health care costs through increased patient financial responsibility. Employers' knowledge of new health plan products, including consumer-driven health plans and tiered-provider networks, has grown considerably in recent years, acco...

• The latest “big idea”—Promoting consumerism in health care is the latest big idea in health insurance in the United States. One of the leading manifestations of this is the use of high-deductible health plans with savings accounts, such as health savings accounts (HSAs) and health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs), collectively known as consumer-driven health plans (CDHPs). The first EBRI/Com...

Senator John McCain's (R-AZ) health plan would eliminate the current tax exclusion of employer payments for health coverage, replace the exclusion with a refundable tax credit for those who purchase coverage, and encourage Americans to move to a national market for nongroup insurance. Middle-range estimates suggest that initially this change will have little impact on the number of uninsured pe...