Friday, August 29, 2008
Not-so-transparent: early days for consumer tools on health price and quality (click here)
Providing price and quality information is viewed as a Holy Grail among health plans and providers, who see transparency as the key for igniting health care consumerism. However, that Grail remains elusive, as issues of tool usefulness and consumer trust cloud the market.......CSHSC looked at two aspects of transparency: price and quality. For larger plans, who are more advanced in their price publishing projects, these efforts are seen as crucial for competitive positioning, according to CSHSC; for smaller plans, they're defensive in nature. Regardless, very few plans are providing price data that's customized for enrollees.
One broker in CSHSC's study commented, "Price information is sparsely available, and where it is available, it's of relatively low utility for the average member." That's the bottom line of the study....
House panel focuses on deceptive health insurance practices (click title to entry - thank you)
06:54 AM CDT on Friday, October 16, 2009
...Null said he had bought a health insurance policy that he thought gave his family catastrophic coverage but learned in the hospital that it maxed out at $25,000.
The hearing focused on the estimated 25 million Americans who are "underinsured," or who lack coverage sufficient for unexpected and costly medical emergencies.
Sara Collins, a vice president with the New York-based Commonwealth Fund, told the subcommittee that 9 million more Americans fell into the underinsured category between 2003 and 2007 because of rapidly increasing costs for insurance and medical care.
Much of the discussion at Thursday's hearing dealt with deceptive sales practices that left consumers unaware of the inadequacies of their health insurance policies.
A San Francisco film producer testified that the policy she bought left her with $100,000 in bills after a five-year battle with breast cancer.
A Colorado engineer said his son's hemophilia caused his employer's health insurance premiums to jump to $22,000 per employee and forced him to leave the firm after hitting a $1 million lifetime cap on treatment.
"We were the bomb that went off. They [the other employees] were the casualties all around us," said Nathan Wilkes of Englewood, Colo...
