Thursday, November 03, 2011
Health-care Price Data Can Be Difficult to Obtain
Thursday, November 03, 2011 2:58:12 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00) ( Consumer-driven health care | High deductible Health Insurance | Transparency )
Why don’t health plans provide their members with useful tools so members can look-up and compare true out-of-pocket prices for health care services --based on their policy, coverage and deductible?  If the plans did provide these types of tools, members would be able to compare prices, evaluate costs before visiting the doctor’s office and save money for both the member and the health plan by finding the best value!  Sounds too good to be true.  Some employers are pushing for transparency and hiring outside vendors to provide solutions for price transparency tools.   A few health plans are providing, in my opinion, very limited tools to help member’s look-up costs before visiting a provider.

As more and more people enroll in high-deductible health plans that require consumers to pay for services upfront before their coverage kicks in, the requirement for pricing tools becomes critical.

The challenge with obtaining access to meaningful price information from claims data continues to be a major obstacle.  An article written by Anna Wilde Mathews, Push for Health-Cost Data, published last week in the Wall Street Journal is a must read for anyone trying to understand the secrecy behind health care price data. 

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