Massachusetts is the first state to require that insurers offer real-time prices. ...There are caveats. 1.) Prices are not standard, they vary from one insurer to the next. I shopped for a bone density test. The low price was $16 at Tufts Health Plan, $87 on the Harvard-Pilgrim Health Care site and $190 at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. Why? Insurers negotiate their own rates with physicians and hospitals. And some of the prices include all charges related to your test, others don’t (see No. 2). 2.) Posted prices may or may not include all charges, for example the cost of reading a test or a facility fee. Each insurer is defining “price” as they see fit. Read the fine print. 3.) Prices seem to change frequently. The first time I shopped for a bone density test at Blue Cross, the low price was $120. Five days later it had gone up to $190. 4.) There is no standard list of priced tests and procedures. I found the price of an MRI for the upper back through Harvard Pilgrim’s Now iKnow tool. That test is “not found” through the Blue Cross “Find a Doc” tool. 5.) The quality information is weak. Most of what you’ll see are patient satisfaction scores. There is little hard data about where you’ll get better care. This is not necessarily the insurer’s fault, for many tests the data doesn’t exist. 6.) There are very few prices for inpatient care, for surgery or an illness that would keep you in the hospital overnight. Most of the prices you’ll find are for outpatient care.
Posted on: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 07:51:51 +0000
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