Adding to the list of healthcare price comparison tools is a consumer website with one of the largest databases yet, although it is perhaps not enough to end the Dark Ages of healthcare transparency.
The nonprofit Health Care Cost Institute is out with a new website called Guroo.com aimed at bringing Americans national, state and local price information for 78 common medical conditions, tests and services, based on claims from insurers covering some 40 million people.
These are "numbers that no one else has," the organization said. The website currently covers 300 cities, 41 states, coastal California and Washington D.C. based on information from Aetna, Humana, UnitedHealthcare and Assurant Health. No Blue Cross insurers are contributing to the database, but could in the future. It's open to all payers, the organization said.
Although the website does not show what the health insurers pay providers or what the out-of-pocket costs are for specific providers, consumers can look up what, say, a hemoglobin A1c blood sugar test costs on the low end, on average or on the high end and how it compares to the state and nation.
In Boston, that A1c ranges from $11 to $34, a little more than than state average and rather more than the national average of at most $25.
The average national cost for a knee MRI is $681. In Wisconsin, the statewide average cost is $1,912 and in the college town of Madison it is some $2,511, the website shows. In Philadelphia, a vaginal childbirth can cost between $11,000 and $20,000, compared to a national average ranging from $9,445 and $16,000.
"For many consumers, shopping for health care doesn't feel like an option; it's simply too complicated," said David Newman, executive director of the Health Care Cost Institute. "Guroo intends to change this by showing consumers they can shop for health care and elect where they spend their healthcare dollars."
"The health care system should be redesigned around the consumer," said Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini. "Delivering reliable cost and quality information to consumers in a simple and convenient way is a major part of that process."
Though not a panacea for the problem of healthcare price opacity, Guroo does offer paying patients with high deductible health plans a sense of what it is reasonable or what is on the higher end, and it is part of a positive trend towards giving patients the information needed to be healthcare consumers.
A variety of insurers, including United, Aetna and Blues plans, are offering their members price comparison tools. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, despite earlier concerns about trade secrets, recently created a public database of what it pays individual providers for some 1,200 procedures in its broad-network Blue Advantage plans and its narrow-network Blue Value plans.
Some states are also starting to requiring payers and providers to offer some semblance of a quote for a certain procedure or service. Last year, Massachusetts became the first state to require insurers to give members real-time prices by provider. And yet even in Massachusetts. there are caveats. For instance the prices may not include all charges, like the cost of reading a test or a facility fee.
Regardless, many health insurers and providers seem to realize that paying patients need clear information to make choices -- and if legacy organizations won't do it, retail clinics are happy to take the low acuity, high margin primary and urgent care business.
On Guroo.com, information on pricing, quality ratings, prescription drugs and Spanish translations are slated for the future. Consumers on health plans from insurers partnering with the Institute will also be able to get more detailed, actionable information, including expected out-of-pocket costs.
