Podcast: Health care costs – ‘a problem hiding in plain sight’

Why are health care costs kept so secret? And medical bills so hard to understand?

When you buy a car, book a flight, or put things in your grocery cart, you not only know the price in advance, but you can also shop around for the best price.

But for most health care services you can’t. And former New York Times editor and reporter, Jeanne Pinder, thinks that makes no sense at all. So much so that she started ClearHealthCosts.com, a project of journalists “committed to bringing transparency to the health-care marketplace by telling people prices for medical procedures and items.”

This is her story, and the story of those who have joined her, to challenge what she calls “a problem hiding in plain sight.”

There were a lot of voices in this podcast. I thought you might like to learn more about these talented professionals and their work:

Jeanne Pinder certainly brings an interesting background to her current role as CEO of ClearHealthCosts.com. Her blog is well worth following.

I found this video entitled ‘The Healthcare Industry & the U.S.S.R.’ particularly entertaining.

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Editor Manuel Torres has been with the Times-Picayune for 17 years.

Jed Lipinski has been reporting on health care there for about 4 years.

Here’s a short video of them discussing their Clear Health Costs coverage back in May, 2017.

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Lee Zurik of Fox 8 is not hard to find. He’s a prolific investigative reporter. This 55-minute in-depth report on Clear Health Costs is fantastic.

All of the patient/consumer voices you hear in the podcast were generously provided by Jed and Fox 8 News – WVUE – New Orleans.

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Finally, I’ve interviewed Dr. Jean Abraham a couple times for the Health News Watchdog podcasts. Last time was a podcast on Wellness Programs.

Jean’s ability to make the complexities of health economics and policy understandable is as appreciated by us as it was by the White House in 2008-2009.

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Additional Resources:

• We’ve compiled this list of Tips & Resources for writing about costs of health care interventions. Worth bookmarking.
• Minnesota Community Measurement just published it’s 2016 Health Care Quality Report. A wealth of comparative data to help guide consumers in the upper Midwest.
• A very lucid and compelling piece of writing on ‘Those Indecipherable Medical Bills‘ by Elisabeth Rosenthal for the New York Times Magazine.

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You can hear all the Health News Watchdog podcasts HERE.