Consumer Driven Health Care?

I know someone at the Monitor is doing serious research into this new trend in health care. Know that I have not done my homework and this is purely anecdotal and gut driven.

The term itself makes me cough and roll my eyes, I could cry but then I laugh. It reads as if to imply consumers said "Hey, do it this way!", when it really means that insurance companies and other truly big players in the industry (and, it is an industry with all the implications of industry) had to wrack ad people's brains to come up with a description that is hard to define and therefore hard to argue with or question. Meanwhile, they had the best year ever profit-wise. Go figure.

As someone who buys their own health-care and, for obvious financial reasons chose a plan with a high( $5000.00) deductible, I know it does stop me from "unnecessary" visits. For instance, I have a right index finger that probably contains a healed fracture, a bit crooked and with a little less range of motion than previously but, hey I am not young, it could be "like arthritis or something" and as a nurse, well, I wasn't so great at getting things checked out in the past, even when I had insurance. But, this time I really did want to have an x-ray, just to know, perhaps to find out if I could do anything about it but, well, this I can live with so why spend the money. In this case, I decided, knowing a bit about the costs, that this could take a sizable chunk out of my deductible without necessarily having results that would justify the expense. I looked at the bank statements and decided.

Young, healthy people, even older healthy people can easily think this isn't so bad and they can handle the deductible if they have to do so. Very sick people who can still be productive may decide it isn't such a bad price to pay to have the huge expenses covered. But, one thing everyone who has health insurance through an employer needs to remember is that the insurance stops when your paycheck does. (unless you are retired with benefits, we hope)  

So, if you become so sick you cannot work for an extended time, or if someone in you family becomes so sick your resources are exhausted, you lose that coverage. Perhaps you lose all you have worked for, the car, the house. Because we, the state, won't help you out until you are that poor. No more than about $2500 in assets in some cases.

Also, in this model; I want to know this:

At what level do employees get different coverage? How high up in an organization are the people whose coverage is much more generous than this? Who is not making the sacrifice? And why? Why are those who can most afford it, not a part of it? (this is like the question of why federal employees don't pay into social security---have them do it and the funds go way up, why not?)----

Specifically, in town. Does the CEO of Concord Hospital have the same Consumer Driven plan? All the top level administrators? Everyone in the place? Please say yes and bust my gas bubble