November 24, 2014

“Health care consumers in the dark” – no kidding

Posted By

Tags

ClearHealthCosts.com, cost transparency, health care costs, Jeanne Pinder, KPCC, KQED, Lisa Aliferis, PriceCheck

That headline appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune print edition yesterday. The focus of the article was how difficult it is to obtain medical cost data despite a state law and other efforts to increase transparency.

The same newspaper had a brief column the previous day about open enrollment season for workplace medical benefits, but that column’s final line seemed to conflict with the point of the longer story mentioned above. The shorter column quoted the executive director of the MN Community Measurement group saying that the group’s rankings – “rating doctors on whether they provide optimal care to patients with diabetes, depression and other conditions….can help consumers make informed choices.” The exec said consumers can now ask, “Is there much difference in quality, given the difference you might be asked to pay in price?”

Well, the “Health care consumers in the dark” story drove home the point that consumers can’t get the price answers.

Meantime, it was great to see a JAMA Internal Medicine article about a great piece of journalism on this same topic. The article, by Lisa Aliferis of KQED radio in San Francisco, was entitled, “Variation in Prices for Common Medical Tests and Procedures.” It gives details about the PriceCheck project of KQED, KPPC, and the excellent ClearHealthCosts.com effort run by Jeanne Pinder. Aliferis concludes the article:

“The window is cracked open on health cost transparency. We have been here before—with car sales, with airline tickets. Now, technology in combination with transparency can do the same for health care.

And yes, we have been asked whether people should “shop” for medical treatment in the same way they shop for a new car. If there were a correlation between cost and quality, this might be a reasonable question. Instead, in American health care, money is spent on unnecessary or unproven treatments much too often, and there’s widespread variation in price. People are waking up to these facts.

The money conversation makes the practice of medicine very complicated: the “gotcha” bill and the medication that is not covered challenge the physician-patient relationship. It is time to take off the blindfold and embrace transparency in pricing for medical care and services.”

———————————–

https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer

https://twitter.com/healthnewsrevu

and on Facebook.

Comments

We Welcome Comments. But please note: We will delete comments left by anyone who doesn’t leave an actual first and last name and an actual email address.

We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified facts, product pitches, or profanity. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. Comments should primarily discuss the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages about health and medicine. This is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science. Nor is it a forum to share your personal story about a disease or treatment -- your comment must relate to media messages about health care. If your comment doesn't adhere to these policies, we won't post it. Questions? Please see more on our comments policy.

Comments are closed.

COMMENTS button We welcome comments, which users can leave at the end of any of our systematic story reviews or at the end of any of our blog posts.

But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.

You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.

This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.

We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.

We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.

There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”

The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:

“Shed light, not just heat. Facts, challenges, disagreements, corrections — those are all fine. Attacking the person, instead of the idea or the interpretation, is neither acceptable nor helpful.”

We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.

And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.

The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.