Consumers Deflect The Blame For Rising Healthcare Costs

Double-digit increases in commercial and Medicare premiums in recent years have fueled consumers' concerns about affording quality healthcare. When Forrester asked whom they blame for the increases in their out-of-pocket expenses, few consumers singled out their own overuse of healthcare services. Instead, consumers pointed to doctors and hospitals, the cost of prescription meds, medical devices, and the government's failure to regulate costs. Consumers' unwillingness to hold themselves accountable for healthcare costs is a stumbling block for proponents of healthcare savings accounts (HSAs) and the new breed of high-deductible consumer-directed health plans (CDHPs). Until consumers accept their share of responsibility, even the financial incentives inherent in HSAs and CDHPs will be a tough sell.

Health Plan Trends 2005: HSAs Make Waves

Federal legislation will be a powerful driver behind healthcare consumerism for 2005. Together with consumer-directed health plans, HSAs will give consumers greater responsibility for, and a financial incentive to make judicious use of, healthcare resources. The Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) allows consumers to create personal, tax-free HSAs to be used in conjunction with high-deductible health plans.

Pharma Marketing Trends 2005: Make Way For Targeted Marketing, Analytics

Brand managers on increasingly tight budgets will again turn to technology to reach and influence qualified consumers. Internet comparison-shopping and the proliferation of ad-skipping capabilities have made mass marketing campaigns practically obsolete, and DTC marketers will turn to technology to help them compensate. Campaign management and analytics solutions will enable pharma to market smarter to a more targeted audience of consumers. Drug firms will build relationships with consumers using data gathered from coupon redemption, Web site visits, email responses, and third-party sources of demographics. Look for pharma to up their spend on analytics-based solutions to keep track of cross-channel patient profiles, refine segmentation models, and measure results.

Plans: Use Cross-Channel Marketing Strategies To Target The Uninsured

The affluent uninsured may appear to be new customers just waiting to be enrolled, but they are not the low-hanging fruit that plans might make them out to be. Payers need to use analytics and data-based marketing to target the 20% of the uninsured who are actually in the market for commercial health insurance. Plans should design marketing campaigns based on the ways that different personas undertake insurance buying. Those shopping for coverage are using online and offline resources, so plans must be consistent across channels, and ensure that the Web and call centers both provide accessible and efficient answers to common queries like premium costs, application processes, and precertification requirements.

We are very interested in your feedback on our research. Do you have topics to recommend, data you would like to have, or technologies you want assessed? Drop me a line at bradholmes@forrester.com so we can connect.



Brad Holmes
VP and Research Director,
Healthcare and Life Sciences

Research Referenced In This Issue eDetailing Breaks Pharma's Marketing Boundaries (35672) Health Plans' Uninsured Prospects (35271) Trends 2005: Health Plans (35659) Trends 2005: Pharmaceutical Marketing (35648) Who Cares About Hospital Quality Data? (35295) Who Is To Blame For Healthcare Costs? (35728)

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