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The Money Side of Consumer Driven Health Care
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  We wrap up this week's series on consumer driven health care with a look at the money side of this movement. Consumer driven insurance plans often involve the creation of what are called Health Savings Accounts. These tax-free accounts are owned by individuals to pay their medical bills. As New Hampshire Public Radio's Jon Greenberg reports, many financial institutions hope to cash in on what could be the biggest new personal investment vehicle in two decades.
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My problem with consumer driven health care is that consumers don't have enough information about the services they are buying. Because approximately 90,000 people die in the US in hospital each year because of avoidable hospital mistakes and most people in hospital are given the wrong medicine or amount of medicine on an average of once per day during their stay, it is imperative for consumers to have more information about the hospital whose services they are buying. We need more information about the doctors whose services we buy. We can't be informed consumers if we can't get this information, and right now we cannot get it. Consumers need to be able do a risk/cost analysis in order to make the informed decisions required by consumer driven health care.