UBA Survey: CDHPs Beat HMOs in Popularity

Consumer-driven health plans (CDHPs) in the U.S. have surpassed HMO plans in covered employees, according to preliminary results released by United Benefit Advisors (UBA) from its 2009 UBA Health Plan Survey, the nation's largest health plan benchmarking survey, with 17,655 plans from 12,316 employers reporting. CDHPs grew at a rate of 33.9 percent this past year and now cover more employees (15.4 percent) than HMO plans (13.6 percent), according to Bill Stafford, UBA vice president, member services. The Northeast region of the country had the largest concentration of CDHPs (23 percent), followed by the North Central region (20.1 percent). The average cost increase for all CDHPs at 6.3 percent was slightly lower than that of the average of all plan types, which increased 7.3 percent this year.