Imagine that you're a middle-income American female in your thirties, working full-time and paying off school loans. You've just found out that you need elective surgery to remove precancerous tumors. Your gynecologist says not to worry; this is a common procedure that thousands of women undergo every year.
However, it's going to cost $10,000 or more, depending on where you live, plus diagnostic tests and follow-up visits. Your private insurance plan will cover a percentage, but after paying your deductible, as well as co-payments and medications, you could end up owing thousands of dollars.
Stories like this are familiar to many Americans, who pay some of the highest healthcare costs in the world-close to $2.5 trillion annually and projected to almost double by 2020. Everyone wonders: Why so much? An answer hasn't been forthcoming, in part because of the lack of comprehensive data on the privately insured.
However, that should change thanks to the recently launched Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI), chaired by Carnegie Mellon's Heinz College researcher Martin Gaynor, who has spent decades exploring healthcare costs. HCCI is working with billions of anonymous medical claims-initially provided by United Healthcare, Aetna, Humana, Kaiser Permanente, and the government-to create a comprehensive collection of data from health plans. Ideally, the information will reveal to policy makers and researchers what is driving healthcare costs and assist them in ensuring that "the nation is able to get greater value from its health spending."
-Danielle Commisso (DC'06)
Related Links:
Carnegie Mellon's Martin Gaynor to Head New Health Care Cost Institute
