Are We Finally Getting Closer to Price Transparency?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 8, 2013 | Trudy Lieberman
The revelations by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Wednesday that hospitals vary widely in what they “charge” for the same procedure—sometimes as much as 10 or 20 times more than Medicare reimburses—confirms what health policy wonks have known for a long time. There’s no consistency in pricing for health care services…

Bad Language: Words One Patient Won't Use (and Hopes You Won't Either)
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 24, 2013 | Jessie Gruman
When I read Trudy Lieberman’s post yesterday, I was reminded that the highly charged political debates about reforming American health care have provided tempting opportunities to rename the people who receive health services. But because the impetus for this change has been prompted by cost and quality concerns of health care payers, researchers and policy experts rather than emanating from us out of our own needs, some odd words have been called into service.

Is Health Care One Gigantic Consumer Problem?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 23, 2013 | Trudy Lieberman
One could easily make a case that health care is today’s biggest consumer problem—not unlike those that sparked the consumer movement of the 1960s and 70s. Back then, consumer issues centered on problems with using credit, buying cars and home improvement services, and obtaining the best price for food, appliances, and just about every other new-fangled and expensive product that sprang from the post-war economy.

Is Health Insurance Sticker Shock for Real?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 9, 2013 | Trudy Lieberman
Wherever you turn, there are complaints about health insurance rates. A Pennsylvania woman tells me her monthly premium will soon be $100 more than it used to be. A New Yorker finds the premium for retiree coverage rising 24 percent...

Unwilling to Pay Extra for Wellness
HBNS STORY | April 9, 2013
Although most overweight adults agree that health insurance benefits designed to promote weight loss are a good idea, they don’t want to pay extra for them, finds a new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Health Care Consumers Are Compromised By Complex Information
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 4, 2013 | Jane Sarasohn Kahn
Americans have embraced their role as consumers in virtually every aspect of life: making travel plans, trading stock, developing photos, and purchasing goods like cars and washing machines. That is, in every aspect of life but health care.

Buying Health Care from a Boutique
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 20, 2013 | Trudy Lieberman
Somehow, I don’t think of money-back guarantees when I think about going to the doctor. Yet as textbook marketing principles creep into health care, a few medical providers are beginning to look like sellers of toothpaste and detergents.

Getting Your Operation at a Cut-Rate Surgery Center
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 29, 2013 | Trudy Lieberman
Consumerism in health care is coming to mean patients must shop around for the best price — for a doctor’s visit, Cipro, health insurance and maybe even your next operation.

Health Insurance: Glossary of Common Terms
PREPARED PATIENT RESOURCE | Pay For Your Health Care
Don't know an HMO from a PPO? Here are some of the most common terms you will encounter when selecting and using health insurance.

Getting Health Insurance
PREPARED PATIENT RESOURCE | Pay For Your Health Care
If you are looking for health insurance, the first thing to do is figure out what coverage you are eligible for.

How to Find and Use Health Insurance
PREPARED PATIENT ARTICLE
Whether you have a preexisting condition or not, are new to shopping for insurance or trying to figure out what coverage you do have, there are resources to help with this often complicated but important purchase.

Getting a Prescription Refill: Hassles from My Health Plan
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 27, 2012 | Val Jones
In a recent post entitled “The Joys of Health Insurance Bureaucracy” I described how it took me (a physician) over three months to get one common prescription filled through my new health insurance plan. Of note, I have still been unable to enroll in the prescription refill mail order service that saves my insurer money and (ostensibly) enhances my convenience.

Women Often Lose Their Health Insurance When Divorced
HBNS STORY | November 13, 2012
Each year, almost 115,000 women in the U.S. will lose their health insurance in the months following a divorce, finds a study in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

100 Million Without Dental Care
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 12, 2012 | Trudy Lieberman
Every year, over 100 million Americans don’t go to the dentist because they can’t afford it, leaving many in pain. How can people pay for dental care?

People Surprised by Costs of Out-of-Network Care
HBNS STORY | October 25, 2012
Forty percent of people who received health care outside of their insurance network did so out of necessity, finds a new study in Health Services Research. About half of those patients did not know how much they would have to pay for their out-of-network care.

Doctors Who Share Patients May Provide Lower Cost Care
HBNS STORY | July 31, 2012
Patients with diabetes or congestive heart failure who receive care from doctors with high levels of patient overlap have lower total health care costs and lower rates of hospitalization, according to a new study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Guest Blog: A Recommendation to Minimize Costs Backfires
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 15, 2012 | Alexis Ball
My mom passed away last December to Stage V breast cancer metastasized to her liver. During this battle she developed ascites (an accumulation of fluid in the peritoneal cavity) as her liver failure progressed. This accumulation of fluid was not only extremely uncomfortable but painful as well.

More Confusion about Those Insurance EOBs'This Time from Medicare
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 6, 2012 | Trudy Lieberman
People have a right to receive in plain language a summary of what doctors bill, what insurers pay and how much they themselves must pay.

'Death Panels': Beliefs and Disbeliefs in Health Care
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 23, 2012 | Trudy Lieberman
Virginia was particularly concerned that she would not get medical treatment after she turns 75. She had heard at that age, 'they send you a letter. They are going to start sending you literature on death.'

What to Do About Long-Term Care Insurance
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 17, 2012 | Trudy Lieberman
The decision to buy long-term-care insurance and how long to keep it is among the toughest people make as health-care consumers. The product is difficult to buy'confusing, complicated, and costly.

Prepared Patient: How to Find and Use Health Insurance
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 5, 2012 | Health Behavior News Service
Several years ago, DeAnn Friedholm had to shop for her own health insurance. The prospective insurance company discovered she had had a couple of benign tumors more than a decade before and so denied her coverage because of her preexisting condition. Just like that, Friedholm had no good option for insurance in case she needed to see a doctor. Whether you are like DeAnn with a preexisting condition, are new to shopping for insurance or trying to figure out what coverage you do have, there are resources to help with this often complicated but important purchase.

The Supreme Court's Health Care Decision and Your Pocketbook
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 5, 2012 | Trudy Lieberman
Last week's drama at the Supreme Court and most of the media coverage that followed omitted crucial information: how a decision either upholding or junking the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will affect ordinary Americans. Because the health reform law is not well understood by most people, it's worth recapping what might happen.

The Government Meets the Jolly Green Giant
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 21, 2012 | Trudy Lieberman
Labels describing key features of health insurance policies will become a reality this fall fulfilling a provision of the health reform law that called for more disclosure and transparency. The idea was to copy the labeling for food products'

Even Small Increases in Copays Affect Use of Children's Healthcare
HBNS STORY | February 17, 2012
Increases in copayments of only a few dollars for ALL Kids, Alabama's Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), led to declines in the use of several healthcare services for the children they affected, reveals a study in Health Services Research.

What Consumers Don't Know About Their Health Insurance
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 7, 2012 | Trudy Lieberman
On a chilly New York day, a sales agent for UnitedHealthcare stood on a noisy street corner in Spanish Harlem pushing Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. He was engaging in table marketing a way to snag new customers, converts from other MA plans, he hoped.

We Are All Health Illiterates: Navigating the Health System in a Sea of Paper and Financial Haze
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 2, 2012 | Jane Sarasohn Kahn
Health literacy isn't just about understanding clinical directions for self-care, such as how to take medications prescribed by a doctor, or how to change a bandage and clean an infected area. It's also about how to effectively navigate one's health system'and that skill is in short-supply'

Young Adults Taking the Health Care Reins
PREPARED PATIENT ARTICLE
Your parents still might be willing to do your laundry, but if you’re over 18, they can’t make your medical decisions. Are you ready to navigate the adult health care system?

Cash Rewards from Your Health Plan
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 30, 2012 | Trudy Lieberman
Harvard Pilgrim Health Care has moved deeper into the business of transforming health care into a commodity governed by the rules of the marketplace. Plan members can get cash rewards'.if they use facilities for outpatient medical procedures and diagnostic testing recommended by the health plan, not their doctors.

Guest Blog: 10 Sex Tips for Better Looking Health Insurance
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 23, 2012 | Michael Millenson
It's always interesting to watch health reform concepts move from policy shops and peer-reviewed papers into the mainstream. Provider report cards have surfaced in venues as diverse as Martha Stewart Living and The Examiner, a supermarket tabloid that promised to reveal 'America's 50 Best Hospitals.'

Revisiting Those Explanations of Benefits
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 19, 2012 | Trudy Lieberman
Katie Ryan-Anderson, a health reporter at the Jamestown Sun in Jamestown, North Dakota, had a question. What did all that gobbledygook on the Explanation of Benefits (EOBs) from Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota mean?

Racial Disparities in Colon Cancer Screening Persist Despite Insurance, Access
HBNS STORY | December 12, 2011
Public health researchers have long attributed the disparity in colonoscopy rates between whites and minorities to a lack of health insurance or access to doctors. Now, a new study in the journal Health Services Research suggests the reasons for the differences are more complex.

What's the Price on That MRI? Patients and the Price of Health Care
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 23, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to speak as a patient about 'consumers and cost information' while being videotaped for use in the annual meeting of the Aligning Forces for Quality initiative funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Here's what I had to say.

The Rocky Adolescence of Public Reporting on Health Care Quality: It's Not Useful Yet, and We're Not Ready
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 9, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
The American people, long protected from the price of health care by insurance, are now forced to act as consumers. This situation is a free marketer's dream.

Lack of Health Insurance Linked to Fewer Asthma Diagnoses in Children
HBNS STORY | October 27, 2011
Providing health insurance to more children could lead to diagnosing additional cases of mild or intermittent asthma, a new study shows. Some who treat childhood asthma say this could increase the number of kids receiving medication to control their asthma symptoms and seeking care for asthma flares.

Health Reform Loopholes
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 13, 2011 | Trudy Lieberman
A couple weeks ago I walked the streets of Lincoln, Nebraska, talking to men and women about whether they thought Washington was listening to their economic concerns. Jeff Melichar manages his family's Phillips 66 gas station on the city's main street, and one of his big financial problems happens to be health insurance.

Guest Blog: Price Tags and Haggling in an Exotic Market
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | September 29, 2011 | Daniela Carusi
While shopping in a market on an exotic trip, a friend of mine picked up an appealing item, but the price seemed high. When she paused to consider the purchase, the shopkeeper asked, 'Don't you want to know if I can do better?' But with health care, we can't predict what the final negotiated payment will be without knowing who is paying and what kind of bargaining position that person is in.

Cigna's New Ad Campaign Aims to Snag New Customers
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | September 27, 2011 | Trudy Lieberman
Cigna launched a $25 million 'GO YOU' national branding campaign last week signaling that they are gearing up for tons of new customers as health reform rolls towards 2014. That new business will come from the millions of Americans now uninsured who will start getting government subsidies as an encouragement to buy health insurance coverage.

Turning 65: A Medicare Snafu
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | September 13, 2011 | Trudy Lieberman
I didn't expect to write a sequel to my seven-part series about signing up for Medicare. Just when I thought I was on the program, and all was fine, it wasn't. After I submitted two bills for routine exams, I learned Medicare would not cover them as my primary carrier. That threw me into a tizzy. All my years of reporting about the program taught me that once you retire Medicare is primary.

Health Insurance, Meet the Jolly Green Giant
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | August 31, 2011 | Trudy Lieberman
It's official now. The government has proposed that descriptions of health insurance policies will resemble those nutritional labels on canned and packaged foods'the ones you look at to find out how much sodium there is in Birds Eye peas versus the A&P brand.

When the Insurance Company Says 'No'
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | August 12, 2011 | Trudy Lieberman
Blue Cross just advised a twenty-six-year old woman I know that it will cut off payments for the physical therapy that was making it possible for her to sit at a keyboard for eleven hours a day. Her thirty sessions were up.

'Is a Cheaper, Effective Option Available?' An Important Question to Ask
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 18, 2011 | Conversation Continues
The Costs of Care blog, "Hidden Costs of Medication", reinforces the importance of asking, 'How expensive is this treatment?" and "Is a less expensive option available?'

Health Insurance Doesn’t Always Protect People From Medical Debt
HBNS STORY | June 30, 2011
A new study confirms that having health insurance coverage is no guarantee against accumulating medical debt for working-age adults.

Conversation Continues: Young Adults and The Affordable Care Act
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 17, 2011 | CFAH Staff
Sara Collins of the Commonwealth Fund and veteran health care journalist Trudy Lieberman look at how the Affordable Care Act is and is not helping young adults stay covered.

Health Reform Predicted to Increase Need for Primary Care Providers
HBNS STORY | March 24, 2011
Expansion of health care coverage mandated by health reform will push demand for primary care providers sharply upward, and thousands of new physicians are needed to accommodate the increase, a new study finds.

How Code Creep Boosts the Price of Health Care
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 22, 2011 | Trudy Lieberman
About 30 years ago I had my first run-in with code creep. A urologist I had visited for a garden-variety urinary tract infection billed $400 to determine that this was what I had. The price seemed excessive, and then I looked at the bill. The good doctor has 'unbundled' his services. He charged for every single thing he did'inserting a catheter, taking a urine sample, writing a prescription and finally adding a fee for a general office visit. I had thought all those things were part of the office visit. I protested. He reduced his charges, and I never went back.

How the Cost of Health Care Creeps Up and Up
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 1, 2011 | Trudy Lieberman
In a previous post, I talked about what happens when a radiology practice goes digital for mammography, even though there's scant evidence that more-expensive digital is better than cheaper film for detecting cancer in older women. Yet the higher-priced costly procedure is winning out. That's pretty much the norm for U.S. health care, for instance, when ThinPrep replaced the conventional method for doing Pap smears. I used to pay $9 for the test; the one I had last summer cost $250.

Vanishing Health Care Choices
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 16, 2011 | Trudy Lieberman
Ask someone what he or she remembers Obama promising during the great health reform debates, and the response might be: 'We can keep the insurance we have.' The president did offer assurances that there would be no socialized medicine with the government dictating where you could go for care. He did not mention, though, that many insured people already have little say in what kind of coverage they get and who can treat them.

When You Have an Insurance Dispute
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 24, 2011 | Jennifer Jaff
While access to health insurance is a critical component of finding good care and making the most of it, being insured is often just the starting point for frequent users of health care services.

Dicker With Your Doc? Not So Fast'
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 20, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
'How to Haggle With Your Doctor' was the title of a recent Business section column in The New York Times. This is one of many similar directives to the public in magazines, TV and Websites urging us to lower the high price of our health care by going mano a mano with our physicians about the price of tests they recommend and the drugs they prescribe. Such articles provide simple, commonsense recommendations about how to respond to the urgency many of us feel ' insured or uninsured ' to reduce our health care expenses.

Assessing Risk: Medicare Advantage vs. Medigap vs. Drug Coverage Only
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 22, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman
As Medicare's open enrollment season draws to a close, it's a good bet that seniors are still sifting through all those brochures and flyers that have come in the mail the last several weeks. My husband received 22. Here's a simple rule to make the sifting go a little faster.

Mini-Med Policies: Is the Government Telling Us Something We Don't Already Know?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 17, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman
The new health reform bureaucracy at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has announced that it will now require employers, health insurers and union welfare benefit funds to disclose to policy holders that the health insurance they have may not be real health insurance at all. They now have to tell us if their coverage does not meet minimum benefit standards required by law and by how much they fall short. So those who have mini-med policies will now get a notice telling them that their policies cover very little. As if people don't already know.

Health Reform: Elections, Politics and Patients
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 14, 2010 | Lisa Esposito
Health care reform is a hot topic with yesterday's court ruling that a portion of the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional.

Assessing Your Risk: Buying a Policy That Doesn't Cover Much
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 2, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman
My friend Ariane Canas, a New York City hairdresser, was eager to tell me about a new health insurance policy she had come across. It was cheap very cheap as such coverage goes. I knew that she and her husband, who is also self-employed, had gotten a notice this fall from their current carrier advising of a 33 percent rate increase.

Does Long-Term Care Insurance Have a Future?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 23, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman
The decision by Metropolitan Life to stop selling long-term care (LTC) insurance once again calls into question the viability of that product as a way to pay for nursing home, assisted living and home care needed by the growing number of elders. MetLife was a solid company'big and reputable, with a knack for selling policies to workers whose employers offered the coverage as an extra benefit. It was a name that people trusted in an industry characterized by many small sellers, some of whom became insolvent.

Inside Health Care: Dichotomies: Quality or Familiarity? Empower or Manage?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 8, 2010 | Inside Health Care

What You Need to Know About Your Health Insurance Policy
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 29, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman
Federal and state government officials and their opponents in the insurance industry have been busy as beavers these days chewing on that perennially vexing problem: how to disclose insurance information so consumers will be wise shoppers. Since we have a market-based model of health insurance, that's not a frivolous question. What works best, what doesn't, and what do consumers acting as shoppers really care about?

Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Blues And Why
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 21, 2010 | Jim Jaffe
Some broad questions about how bad it is to be big are raised by the government's new antitrust suit against Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, which allegedly used its market dominance to force hospitals to charge other insurers a third more than the insurance giant paid. One can see how this could help the nonprofit Blues control the market, but it is difficult to determine how this was in the public interest ' or even advantageous to those it was covering.

More People Get Health Screenings When Deductibles Are Waived
HBNS STORY | October 15, 2010

Revisiting Those Puzzling EOBs: New York Penalizes Aetna
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 14, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman

Selecting Health Insurance? Help from Around the Web:
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 13, 2010 | CFAH Staff
In his most recent blog, "How to Pick Good Health Insurance - Your Life Depends on It," Dr. Davis Liu emphasizes how important is it for us to evaluate carefully our health insurance plans. Liu points out that, unlike other companies or products whose efficacy may impact our lives modestly ' your car wash, dry cleaners and choice of movie theater ' the ranking of your health insurance plan relative to others impacts your life greatly. And not all health plans are created equal.

Adding an Adult Son or Daughter to Your Insurance
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | September 30, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman

Matt Seeks Health Insurance, Part 2: The Runaround Continues
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | September 24, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman

Healthy, Educated Employees More Likely to Pick High-Deductible Plan
HBNS STORY | September 16, 2010

A New Way for Hospitals to Make a Little Extra'Tax the Sick
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | September 8, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman
Dianne Cooper Bridges, a feisty health reform activist in Massachusetts, recently found herself in the hospital for a routine consultation with no tests or procedures. Because Bridges, a self-employed designer, refuses to buy the required health insurance in her state, she has no insurance and occasionally pays a fine. That means she shops carefully for medical care, which she pays for in cash. When she called the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center and asked how much her consultation would be, the hospital quoted her a price between $100 and $200.

Matt Seeks Health Insurance: A Young Adult Falls Through the Cracks of Health Reform
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | August 26, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman

Sorting Through the Indecipherable 'Explanation of Benefits' Is Becoming a Required Skill
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | August 16, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman

More People Choosing Consumer-Directed Health Plans---Pitfalls and All
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | August 9, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman

For Parents of Uninsured Kids, a Little Help Goes a Long Way
HBNS STORY | August 7, 2010

Keeping an Eye on Insurance Rate Hikes
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 29, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman

Paying to Participate
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 14, 2010 | Goldie Pyka

What Happens When an Insurance Company Misbehaves
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 12, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman

Is Choosing a Health Plan Like Buying a Car or Canned Goods?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 21, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman
Do consumers buy health insurance like they buy canned peas? Or should they? That's the big question market place advocates have been trying to answer now for more than a decade. The government and others have thrown gobs of money at this vexing problem trying to figure out the best combination of stars, bars and other symbols that will catch the shopper's eye.

What Happens When COBRA Disappears?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 4, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman

Latinas Delay Seeking Care, Even if Insured and Ill
HBNS STORY | June 3, 2010

Will You Be Helped by the New High-Risk Health Pools?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 26, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman

Out-of-Pocket Costs Put Arthritis Drugs Out of Reach for Some
HBNS STORY | May 20, 2010

Access to Health Insurance Is Just a Start'
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 7, 2010 | Kalahn Taylor Clark

Employment and Insurance: No Guarantee for Better Health
HBNS STORY | April 30, 2010

Can You Really Choose the Best?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 29, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman

How Safe Is Your Insurance, Really?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 19, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman
Throughout the long debate over health reform, the president told us if we liked the insurance we had, we could keep it.' No government would come between us and our health coverage!'

Not just about Mom and Dad's Health Insurance...
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 6, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman
In the past two weeks I have visited two college campuses---one in Brooklyn and one in Wisconsin.' Large numbers of students turned out to hear about the new reform law and wanted to know what it meant for them.'