11/20/2006
Know your health-care options
It's no secret that health care is in critical condition, and Health and Human Services reports that health-care costs are growing three times faster than wages. As the struggle to increase accessibility and affordability continues, small-business owners, their employees and their families still don't have the most basic tool they need to become better health-care consumers--information.
While Consumer Reports offers the latest ratings and reviews on performance, reliability and affordability of our automobiles, a similar point of reference isn't available for health-care services. In today's global economy, where information is power, health-care consumers and providers lack the most basic information on the real costs of medical goods and services.
Gaining access to critical information is difficult because, aside from co-payments and insurance premiums, few consumers actually know how much they pay for health care. At best, health care is a labyrinth of treatment centers, hospitals and providers working off different payment structures, computer systems and information networks. It's tough to imagine an organized, uniform system where the data you need about cost and quality are easy to find and understand.
To spend your health-care dollars wisely, you need to need to know your options, have access to information about the quality of doctors and hospitals in the area, and know how much a health-care procedure will cost.
Speaking about health care during a roundtable in Minnesota, President Bush said, "There's a choice between having the government make decisions or consumers make decisions. I stand on the side of encouraging consumers. I think the most important relationship in health care is between the patient and the provider ... And health-care policy ought to be aimed at bolstering the consumer, empowering individuals to be responsible for health-care decisions."
The federal government, which accounts for one-quarter of Americans covered by health insurance and pays for as much as 40 percent of all health-care costs in America, recently took a step toward providing the information needed to put consumers on a path toward financial responsibility in health-care spending. President Bush signed an executive order Aug 22 to help increase the transparency of America's health-care system by empowering Americans to find better value care.
The executive order directs federal agencies to:
- Increase Transparency in Pricing by directing federal agencies to share with beneficiaries information about prices paid to health-care providers for procedures.
- Increase Transparency in Quality by directing federal agencies to share with beneficiaries information on the quality of services provided by doctors, hospitals, and other health-care providers.
- Encourage Adoption of Health Information Technology Standards by directing federal agencies to use improved health IT systems to facilitate the rapid exchange of health information.
- Provide Options that promote Quality and Efficiency by directing federal agencies to develop and identify approaches that facilitate high quality and efficient care.
Discussing the mission of the federal government to bring better care and lower costs to America's health care consumers, Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt summed it up by saying, "As value in health care becomes transparent, everything improves: costs stabilize, more people are insured, they get better health care and economic competitiveness is preserved."
It has long been said that knowledge is power. But the entire health-care industry--medical providers, insurers and physicians--will have to work together to provide consumers with the information about price and quality they want and need to be informed in today's health-care marketplace.
