Shopping for Care
Castlight Health [is a] nascent health care start-up…with the goal of giving insurance subscribers meaningful information on health care costs. Castlight, in the simplest terms, wants to bring comparison shopping to health care.
It launched, last year, a Web site where employees on [Health Saving Account] plans can compare what doctors charge for the same service. The site…also includes other patients’ quality rankings of doctors, alongside information on what remains in an individual’s account.
More from Sarah Kliff at Ezra Klein’s blog.
Good ideas like this will only improve the health care system. Unfortunately, government finds a way to discourage good ideas.
This is a great idea. My only problem with the concept is that I wonder why consumers have to pay to find out how much things cost. If enough patients controlled their own health care dollars below a high-deductitble, prices would become more transparent because providers would compete for their dollars.