Phil AmmannDo you know how much your healthcare costs?
If you walk into a grocery store, you will see the price for every product on the shelves. On a car lot, every car has a sticker price. When you go to amazon.com, is there one item you click on that you have to purchase first to find out how much you owe? If there were, you’d never visit the website again.
But in healthcare, Floridians are left to accept the status quo where you go to the hospital for a procedure without knowing the cost to you or your insurer and are left to wonder how much you’ll be left to pay.
Worse, not only is the cost a mystery, but the quality of care you’ll receive is unknown. Oftentimes, a patient’s sole data point on a doctor or hospital is from word of mouth.
There is some good news though. By and large, Florida’s doctors and hospitals are some of the best in the nation and they care about delivering quality care.
But to reduce costs and empower consumers, we need to pull back the curtain on the true cost of healthcare and deliver price and quality transparency.
That is why we’ve introduced HB 1175. Our bill proposes three vital reforms.
First, it sets up a website where patients can search the prices of medical procedures at all Florida hospitals. But it is the data behind this platform that is the most impressive. With secure data about health claims paid by Florida insurers, we can smartly predict prices locally, give hospitals and physicians an idea of where they rank on price and quality and give the patient an opportunity to become an informed healthcare consumer.
Second, the bill requires hospitals and doctors to give Floridians detailed estimates of the cost of their hospital treatments before it happens — a personalized estimate. And insurance companies will be required to estimate the patient’s cost-sharing based on the hospital estimate, as well as tell you the amount they will cover for the procedure before you make your decision.
Finally, it requires hospitals to use and publish “culture surveys.” These surveys of hospital employees tell us their opinions about the quality of care where they work. Floridians will be able to see what the quality of care is like from the people who witness it firsthand.
If you know an auto mechanic won’t take his car into the body shop where he works, aren’t you less likely to send your car there for repairs? And if you knew a cardiologist who wouldn’t go to the hospital where she works for her own heart surgery, wouldn’t you be less likely to choose that facility?
So in the complicated world of healthcare, let us leave you with one glaring example about how price transparency would help you.
The Healthcare Pricing Project did a study of seven hospitals in Tampa that performed identical knee replacement surgeries and measured the amount they billed the private insurers.
The lowest bill was $10,500 to the insurer, and the highest bill was over $30,000. That’s nearly a 200 percent difference for the same procedure at medical facilities that are mere miles apart.
For nearly $20,000 less, you could get the same procedure for the same quality of care.
But today, there’s no way to know that because Florida healthcare consumers are kept in the dark.
We shouldn’t be left to wonder about the true cost of healthcare, or worry that an unexpected bill will arrive in the mail. It’s time to deliver healthcare price and quality transparency and empower Florida consumers to get the best care at the best price.
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Chris Sprowls is from North Pinellas County and represents the 65th District of the Florida House and is the sponsor of HB1175. Jason Brodeur is Chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee in the House and represents the 28th District. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
