

How Safeway Slashed Its Healthcare Costs, While Keeping Quality High - byrneseyeview
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-safeway-slashed-its-healthcare-costs-while-keeping-quality-high-2009-6

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aristus
"By the end of the year, employees will be able to go on a Web site, punch in
a zip code, and get a list of providers and costs."

Christ onna bike, finally someone arm-twisted an insurer to release price
information. Now was that so hard?

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aamar
Safeway's doing great work and genuinely innovating on multiple fronts. Our
startup (URL in my profile) is working on this part of it; great to hear that
people are interested.

The procedure code part of it is challenging. We're using a combination of
plain-English descriptions of the various codes and some predictive modeling
to try to get you to the right code. We can't guarantee anything there, but
we're hoping we can narrow it down to a small subset and give you a pretty
good idea of what your out-of-pocket is going to be.

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aristus
Hell, if you can automate medical transcription, forget making a consumer
website, sell it to hospitals and insurers. That's a whole industry unto
itself.

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rodyancy
If the price of medical care were readily available, I believe the health care
"crisis," as it has been called, would be considerably less of an issue. Once
care givers responded to the transparency, prices would drop. Additionally,
individuals would be able to determine the level of risk associated with
purchasing more affordable high deductible insurance. Currently, most people
just pick the insurance product that gives them the lowest deductible, never
stopping to consider that the aggregate cost of their routine visits may
amount to less than the difference between high and low deductible coverage.

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skmurphy
Burd's key observation: "cure for today's ills is simply removing the
obstacles to a free health-care market." (from referenced WSJ article at
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124536722522229323.html> )

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billybob
Great ideas. Somebody get that CEO a megaphone.

