Consumers shopping for prices for healthcare services aren’t always finding the information as easily as they might wish, despite growing efforts by Medicare and hospitals to provide greater pricing transparency, reports the Chicago Tribune. In some instances, consumers who have queried insurers on what they can expect to pay out-of-pocket for various procedures have been told that the prices negotiated with hospitals and physicians are confidential. And the restaurant-type rating system that some insurers are using to compare hospitals’ “cost efficiency” isn’t meaningful, say consumers. “The market just isn’t ready yet to deliver on the promise of these new insurance products,” Larry Boress, president of the Midwest Business Group on Health, told the Tribune.
A handful of insurers, however, are experimenting with providing consumers with more meaningful price data. The Tribune highlights projects by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois that will calculate average out-of-pocket hospital costs this fall; a pilot project by Aetna that posts negotiated physician prices for more than 100 procedures; and an initiative by the Business Health Care Group of Southeast Wisconsin to get Humana to disclose bundled prices for physician and hospital services for 30 inpatient procedures and six outpatient procedures, revealing huge price variations among providers.
