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November 21, 2007 at 10:59 PM
Insurance executives, benefits buyers and health care providers have much more faith in the power of price information than academic researchers, labor leaders, consumer advocates and government officials do.
Researchers at the Commonwealth Fund, New York, have published data supporting that conclusion in a summary of results from an informal survey of 241 “health care opinion leaders.”
About 56% of the 77 insurance executives and benefits buyers, and 53% of the 70 health care providers who participated predicted that making more detailed health care price information available to consumers could reduce health care spending by at least 1%.
Only 49% of the 37 government officials, labor leaders and consumer advocates who participated said they think price transparency can cut spending by 1% or more, and only 42% of the academic researchers expressed that level of optimism about the power of pricing information.
More than one-fifth of the researchers, government officials, labor leaders and government advocates expect price transparency to have no effect on health care spending, the researchers report.
