Healthcare Daily Digest for 7 February 2013: Why Healthcare Pricing Should Not Follow the Used Car Lot Model

Much like used car lots, swap-meets, and that alleged hidden menu at Arbys (where you can get something disgusting known as “wet fries” and I’m sorry) — Californians, and likely other states, are discovering that many healthcare providers have several price lists. There is no transparency to pricing.

T…hat’s not how it’s supposed to work. “Under a current California law called the Payers’ Bill of Rights, it requires hospitals and medical centers to report the costs of their procedures and services. But health policy experts say these charges—the so-called sticker prices—are not representative of what patients, or their insurance providers, will end up paying.”

If one were tracking “Bad Ideas in Healthcare I would think that would be towards the top of the list. Haggling for the best price in medicine makes healthcare into used car buying; and maybe healthcare shouldn’t be like used car buying. It should be like healthcare. Unless you’re David Lansky, president and CEO of Pacific Business Group on Health. “Lansky says in a perfect world, finding and getting the best deal at the hospital should be like going to buy a car.”

Which sounds like the opposite of a perfect world.

Other headlines to make you think:

• Top 4 Small-Cap Stocks In The Healthcare Information Services: Computer Programs & Systems (NASDAQ: CPSI), Medidata Solutions (NASDAQ: MDSO), Quality Systems (NASDAQ: QSII), Allscripts Healthcare Solutions (NASDAQ: MDRX). But you didn’t hear that from me. You heard it from these guys.

• Thank You for Being a Friend: “Sen. Robert Menendez raised concerns with top federal health-care officials twice in recent years about their finding that a Florida eye doctor — a close friend and major campaign donor — had overbilled the government by $8.9 million for care at his clinic, Menendez aides said Wednesday.”

• Great Job, Senior Citizens!: “Seniors have saved about $5.7 billion on prescription drugs since January 2011 because of provisions in the 2010 health care law meant to close the Medicare “doughnut hole,” the government plans to announce today.”

• Personalized Healthcare: According to an NJIT Distinguished Professor, personalized healthcare is going to revolutionize 21st century medicine.