Firm Controls Costs While Maintaining Employee Preventive Health Car

Susan H. Busch Differential cost-sharing approaches in employee health benefits encourage use of preventive care services while controlling a firm’s overall health-care costs, according to a study published recently in Health Affairs by researchers at Yale School of Medicine. The study, titled “Effects of a Cost-sharing Exemption on Use of Preventive Services at One Large Employer,” evaluated how Alcoa, a world leader in aluminum production, implemented a new benefit plan for some employees and their families in 2004.