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Vested Health Consumer-Directed Health Plan Announces Positive Results

Posted on: Thursday, 21 April 2005, 12:00 CDT

CHARLESTON, W.Va., April 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Vested Health announced today that its consumer-driven solutions have achieved much better results than traditional health plans designed solely around the utilization of defined benefits.

An analysis of Vested Health's more than 11,000 members shows that after four years of providing leading-edge, consumer-driven healthcare solutions, its average rate increases are well below national health plan rate increase averages.

According to the most recent semi-annual National Health Care Trend Survey conducted by Mellon, U.S. employers are expecting between 12.1% to 14.2% average rate increases for 2005. Key findings in the Vested Health Study show that overall rate increases for:

* employers with fewer than 50 employees was only 4.5%

* employers with more than 50 employees was only 7.8%

Another important result that relates to the consumer-directed trend in health care is the amount of funds that have rolled over and are available to Vested Health members to utilize for health care goods and services of their choice. The Vested Health Study showed that:

* employers with fewer than 50 Employees had a roll over rate of 60.8%

* employers with more than 50 Employees had a roll-over rate of 63.9%

This means that more than 60% of the funds made available to employees by their employer was available for their use in the second year of the plan. For example, if an employer makes $1,000 available to an employee via a Vested Health HRA program, on average more than $600 would roll over to the following year, giving the employee more than $1,600 available for their use in year two.

"Vested Health is providing unprecedented control to consumers," said Mike Baker, CEO of Vested Health. Baker continued, "This data proves we are fulfilling our mission to help consumers achieve health care financial freedom and to enable businesses to stabilize their health care costs over the long- term."

The Vested Health Study also proved that when designed correctly, consumer-driven health care is not a cost shifting mechanism, but a way to shift decision-making and assets to the people who should be making those decisions in coordination with their physicians - consumers of care.

"We have a proven history of enabling consumers of care to make sound decisions for themselves and we are working each and every day to create price transparency at the point of sale for health care, so that we are able to provide programs that help businesses, physicians and Vested Health members take control of their health care while reducing administrative expense," Baker concluded.

Vested Health has members in 15 states and has recently expanded its operations to Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Kentucky. For more information on how Vested Health helps companies control rising medical expenses, call 1-866-347-3640 or visit them on the web at http://www.vestedhealth.com/ .

Vested Health

CONTACT: Mike Baker, CEO, +1-304-347-3640, or Andy Malinoski, MarketingDirector, +1-304-542-4883, both of Vested Health

Web site: http://www.vestedhealth.com/

Source: PRNewswire

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