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Article Excerpt
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
The purchase of healthcare services can be compared to the purchase of a car, according to HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt. Various products and services are combined to deliver the car into the driver's hands, however, unlike healthcare, the driver knows the price of the car before driving it off the lot.
Current healthcare pricing "cannot be understood by a human being with average intelligence or limited patience," according to Leavitt. He believes the industry must overcome the notion that healthcare pricing should be different than other goods and services.
In fact, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission is evaluating how Medicare might pay providers single prices for episodes of care and is urging Congress to enact legislation as such. Routine surgery prices, for example, might bundle the cost of the surgery, the hospital stay, the anesthesiologist and other related therapy into one price. And providers could bid competitively for Medicare's business.
"The goal is to get to a price people can understand," Leavitt tells MHE. Only then can purchasers compare apples to apples and make cost-conscious decisions. He says the bundled-pricing structure will be "transformative."
Geisinger Health System and Geisinger Health Plan, based in Danville, Pa., have attracted interest from Medicare officials and other top industry players ever since they introduced a bundled-pricing program called ProvenCare in February 2006. Geisinger Health Plan President and...
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