Breakthrough: Cigna Enrollees Get to Know What Things Cost
The 200 procedures, which range from delivering babies to knee replacement surgery, represent 80 percent of Cigna’s medical claims.
The new feature available at mycigna.com allows the health insurer’s members to assess medical costs — including specialist, facility and related fees — according to the real-time status of their health plan deductibles and co-insurance, as well as their available health spending account funds, before choosing their physician.
Full editorial by John George on Cigna’s new online services in the Philadelphia Business Journal.
This sounds like a really great tool. The uncertainty of final cost when going to the doctor or having a procedure done is very frustrating and stressful.
Great idea!
I have always believed that insurers need to do more to steer enrollees to low-cost providers. For example, an MRI can vary in price from $600 to $1,600 at facilities within walking distance of each other. Yet, most insurers will pay for either MRI regardless of where the enrollee obtains it.
Assuming Cigna has networks of providers where enrollees pay lower prices, then the greatest price differences should be between those who are in or out of the network. So the cost tool is a way to steer enrollees toward network providers — better than a directory, but how much competition on price?
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