Healthcare Cost Estimator Tools Evolving; Consumers Can Compare Prices

I have posted multiple notes about the opacity of healthcare pricing, particularly that of hospital bills (see, for example:Maryland Controls Hospital Prices; Now Wants to Cap Overall Hospital Spending;Coding for Hospital Services; One Reason for the High Cost of Healthcare). There has been some progress in making prices more transparent and a recent article went into great detail about this topic (see:Is the price right? Solving healthcare ’s transparency problem). In today's note, I will only address healthcare cost-estimator tools but read this whole article if you are interested. Below is an excerpt from it:The amount of price information available for consumers is growing. Nearly all major health plans offer a cost-estimator tool or contract with a third-party vendor to provide one so that commercially insured patients can search for a common clinical service and obtain a cost estimate. The vast majority of self-insured employers —85%—offer such tools to employees. They contract with vendors such asCastlight orTruven Health Analytics. Of the health plans with cost-estimator tools, less than half use negotiated rates with providers to produce the estimate....Still, insurers say their tools can save members big bucks.Since it launched its tool in 2015, Grand Rapids, Mich.-based health plan Priority Health estimates that its members have saved an average of $1,000 each to date, while a total of $6.3 million has been avoided in total healthcare costs. Priority ’s...
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Tags: Cost of Healthcare Healthcare Business Healthcare Delivery Healthcare Insurance Medical Consumerism Source Type: blogs