There was interesting health care news yesterday in USA Today: an item by Julie Appleby of Kaiser Health News, providing some examples of new arrangements aimed at encouraging nationwide "shopping" for low-cost, high-quality health care.
As the article describes it, some employers are now seeking out facilities with good quality records and notably low costs on specific procedures, and encourage their insured employees who need those procedures to travel to those facilities for their surgery, with costs of travel picked up by the employer.
Whether or not this might work for everyone, or regardless of whether some may think it doesn't provide the best care, what's interesting about it is that employers, insurers, patients, and others involved in health care seem increasingly inclined to search for innovative ways of reducing costs while maintaining quality, and of making people more responsible for choice in their health care.
Ultimately, I think that's a good trend. And it's a trend that has been catalyzed, or greatly accelerated, by the health care legislation earlier this year, a fact that is, and probably will remain, unappreciated by many.
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