Value-Based Insurance Design Helps Adherence, No Effect on Overall Costs

When health insurers offer financial incentives through value-based insurance design (VBID), patients have greater likelihood of filling prescriptions for their chronic conditions. However, research hasn't shown a drop in overall medical spending when it comes to VBID. Modern Healthcare reports:

Patients are more likely to fill prescriptions that treat costly, chronic diseases when health insurers offer them a financial incentive to do so through value-based insurance design. That's the good news in a research review just published by the journal Health Affairs.

The bad news? Research has yet to show any significant drop in overall medical spending, wrote authors of the review, which examined prior studies of value-based design and proper medication use.

This isn't necessarily surprising given that experts say it often takes time for improved drug treatment and care to stabilize patients' chronic conditions and reduce their healthcare costs. And by then the patient may have switched insurers.

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