From The New York Times:
I left my job as a health insurance executive at Cigna after a crisis of conscience. It began in 2005, during a meeting convened by the chief executive to brief department heads on the company’s latest strategy: “consumerism.”
Marketing consultants created the term to persuade employers and policymakers to shift hundreds, and in many cases thousands, of dollars in health-care costs onto consumers before insurance coverage kicks in. At the time, most Americans had relatively modest cost-sharing obligations — a $300 deductible, a $10 co-payment. “Consumerism” proponents contended that if patients had more “skin in the game” they would be more prudent consumers of health care, and providers would lower their prices.