Will High Deductible Health Insurance Plans Become The Norm? 
A very good and perceptive question . From the perspective of a 30-year health insurance veteran I can certainly say that by the standards of the mid-1980 's when $ 250 or $ 500 deductibles were the norm almost any health insurance plan offered today is a high deductible plan . Now , high deductible health plan means different things to different people/organizations . Since the inception of Health Savings Accounts in 2003 the term high deductible health plan was generally associated with a health insurance policy designed to be complimented by a Health Savings Account . Over the years , as health care costs have continued to escalate and pull health insurance costs up along with them , there has been a steady increase in plan deductibles in traditional health insurance plans that feature copayments for services like doctors visits and prescription drugs . With the implementation of the Affordable Care Act -LRB- ObamaCare -RRB- this trend has accelerated sharply for a variety of reasons . Today my average small group employer client usually has a deductible in the $ 2000 to $ 2500 range and in the individual health insurance market plans with deductibles in the $ 4000 to $ 6000 range are not uncommon , and these are all for plans that still maintain many copayment features and are not qualified for use with a Health Savings Account . If the Cadillac Tax provisions of the Affordable Care Act go into effect in 2018 as currently planned this will place great pressure on many organizations to increase their plan deductibles significantly to keep their premium levels below the threshold where this tax would be assessed . This will impact many organization that have traditionally offered rich health benefits packages to their employees/members . State , county and municipal governments , educational institutions , hospitals , and ironically many labor union plans are some of the prime examples of organizations that will be adversely impacted by this tax . So , to a fairly large extent , one can argue that high deductible health plans have already become the norm in the individual and small group health insurance markets and are in the process of being joined by their cousins in larger businesses . Absent some serious changes in America 's health care cost structure and the requirements of the Affordable Care Act the move to high deductible plans with their associated cost shifting to the health care consumer are a foregone conclusion . 