Over 20 million books on health care have been given out, including office triage services to manage demand and improve customer satisfaction. Increased self-management has also become popular. Cost sharing copayments and deductibles have risen with the rising health care costs to the employers. A medical savings account idea has been popular as well. Recent research shows that employees will switch to a medical savings account when informed.
Consumers can realize direct economic benefit from an improved medical savings account idea.
The most promising development has been through the Internet. The use of the Internet has become the de facto trend in information exchange. Email is traded daily by 60 million users world wide. It allows interaction because of its universal accessibility. The number of users of the Internet has increased from three-quarters of million users in 1993, to 20 million users this year, and 100 million worldwide before the year 2000.