Aetna CEO Warns of Approaching Health Insurance ‘Premium Rate Shock’ in 2014 for Consumers and Others Under Affordable Care Act
Steep increases in insurance costs may leave patients with less money to cover deductibles and copayments for clinical laboratory tests Next year, consumers and small businesses can expect what one health insurance CEO says will be, “Premium rate shock for 2014.” As this happens, clinical laboratories and pathology groups are likely to find it even more difficult to collect co-pays, deductibles, and out-of-pocket fees from patients who had medical laboratory tests performed. The premium rate...Consumers Now Use Medical Cost Websites to Price Shop for Clinical Pathology Laboratory Tests and Other Medical Procedures
Before consumers visit a clinical laboratory, they can now check the “fair” price of medical laboratory tests. New websites have sprung up that make it easy for consumers to find what experts consider to be fair market prices for each type of lab test, as well as for other medical procedures and healthcare services.
Senators Baucus and Grassley Want Documents from Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp Relating to Discounted Medical Lab Test Pricing Practices
Two Senate committees seem interested in how certain medical laboratories offer discounted laboratory test prices to selected health insurers Is it a coincidence that discounted medical laboratory test pricing offered by the nation’s two largest clinical laboratory companies appears to now be the subject of interest for the Senate Judiciary and Senate Finance Committees? Last Tuesday, Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) issued a press release titled “Grassley,...Aetna, Humana, Kaiser, UnitedHealth Put Five Billion Medical Claims into Database for Healthcare Cost, Utilization Research
Data represents $1 trillion in spending since 2000 and contains clinical laboratory and pathology data In what may turn out to be a positive development for clinical laboratories and pathology group practices, four of the nation’s five biggest health insurance companies will collaborate and put their medical claims data for billions of transactions into a single data base. Researchers say this database will give them an unprecedented ability to assess utilization trends and the clinical care...