Families with high-deductible health insurance plans are more likely to put off care, study finds

Families who have health plans with high deductibles and who have members with chronic health conditions are far more likely to put off or forgo care entirely due to cost, a study has found. The odds of those families delaying or forgoing care were three to four times more likely than families with traditional plans.

Those were the key findings of a study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Using a mail and phone survey, researchers talked to families with employer-sponsored insurance in Massachusetts between April and December 2008. Respondents included 208 families with high-deductible plans and 370 families with traditional plans.

For adults with high-deductible plans and with incomes less than four times the federal poverty level, the probability they would delay or forgo care was 40 percent. For adults in the same income bracket with traditional plans that probability was only 15.1 percent. (Read more)