Year-End Deductibles Create Inefficiency

Christmas crowds the consumer shopping calendar and thereby creates inefficiencies and inconveniences. Guess what other personal finance event does the same thing, on exactly the same schedule? The year-end medical deductible!

The large majority of US healthcare plans match the deductible to the calendar year. The results is a skew toward pushing off treatment, in order to maximize meeting the deductible. Likely the largest factor is when a patient knows they are a candidate for an expensive procedure whose timing is highly elective (e.g. joint replacement). 

This covers the both the clear need case (knee replacement), but where there is substantial flexibility to push it off for a few years. It also cover the case where the patient wants a medically-covered procedure, even if they don't absolutely need it (in my own case, drooping eyelid that slightly obscured field of vision, so that it was medically necessary, but also something I could live with indefinitely). 

The result is that a substantial number of major procedures get crowded into the year-end. This makes life difficult and inefficient for everybody:

1. Providers and staff work too much at end of year.
2. Facility capacity has to be geared toward peak (like how utilities have to have generating capacity for daytime peak, rather than average load).
3. Consumers schedule things based on deductible-satisfaction, not their calendar optimum.
4. Some people get crowded out--including those with an urgent medical need, not tied to deductible-timing.

Probably even magnified since if you conclude in August you are likely to hit your deductible, it is going to be Nov-Dec before you can have that expensive procedure--magnifying the crowding.

I think it has always been that way

Inconsistent benefits years sucks for married people, but there could be some kind of fix, li

Idea: longer deductibles, like maybe 3 years?