In less than a week, a few of us will be in San Francisco for the Health 2.0 conference as well as attending the HealthCamp SF Bay. We are excited to be part of such an innovative group of folks trying to make changes in the healthcare world. You may be asking… what is this HealthCamp thing?

What is HealthCamp

HealthCamp is about putting social media, open source and the best of the Internet, Mobile Web and process innovation to work for better health care and health technology. HealthCamp is a user-organized “un–conference” movement that brings consumers, health providers, health industry experts and technology professionals together for a one day event to exchange ideas informally, locally, openly. Participants themselves provide the content, with break-out sessions they develop themselves and plug into a schedule grid on the day of the event. Anyone can present and host a session in nearly any format.

#HCSFBay is our hashtag on Twitter, please use it and spread the word!

How to Find Us

Well, if you don’t know who we are or what we do, you can take a peek at our sexy personal detiails to see pictures and bios for us (Christopher Parks, Robert Hendrick and Chris McIntyre). If you are wondering what we do, head on over to http://www.changehealthcare.com and see how we can help you save money on your health related expenses.

Make sure you follow us on Twitter, that is the best way to keep up with us when we are on the road!

• Christopher Parks – @caparks
• Robert Hendrick – @jrh3
• Chris McIntyre – @theferf
• change:healthcare – @askch

See you there!

Just got finished trying out the White House twitter site that allows tweeple to pop off a pre-formatted mantra in favor of healthcare reform. It’s a neat bit of technology – cool in many ways. But it’s an agenda pusher.

It’s all talk and NO action.

Now compare that with the recently-launched Twitter app from change:healthcare. It allows tweeple to receive information on health conditions and medication costs as well as prescription medication costs, generic alternatives and more using secure private messages via Twitter.

Government talks. Industry acts.

If you want to find the cost of prescription medication and medical term definitions via Twitter – Just Ask! Follow @askch on twitter and send a question in the proper format to see how you can change healthcare too.

Image Courtesy of SqueakyMarmot on Flickr

“If you knew what the price of items were at Wal-Mart before you went into the store to buy them, it would put Wal-Mart out of business.”

That has to be one of the single most insane statements ever written.Yet that’s exactly what many doctors and hospitals would have you believe about healthcare. If you knew the price before you went into the doctors office or hospital, it would put the healthcare provider out of business.

Excuse me?

No. It would not. In fact, it might make the patient consider whether they needed that service or not. It might make them question if they really need all 8 prescriptions.It might make the provider find ways to offer the procedure more cost effectively as John Stossel so elegantly pointed out about Lasik eye surgery.

When someone hesitates to tell you the price of an item, why do they do it?

4 Reasons Why People Hesitate to Tell you the Price:

• They are ashamed at having to charge that much
• They do not believe the product is worth the cost
• They prefer you make an emotional commitment to purchase before knowing the price
• They simply do not know the price (the fallback reason in healthcare)

Fortunately, rational thought does occasionally prevail. The recent post from KevinMD.com points out (from the physician’s perspective – no less) that price transparency won’t effect health care costs.

It won’t adversely impact the cost of healthcare. It will force providers to be more cost effective and up front about their costs. It will force consumers to be more selective and engaged in the purchasing decision.

But will knowing the price put healthcare providers out of business? Not likely. In fact, knowing the price seems to be working wonders for Wal-Mart and…oh…just about every other business model in the U.S.

Consumerism, just like transparency, is a current industry buzz word.  It is thrown around like everyone knows exactly what “healthcare consumerism” means.  However, consumerism often refers to the “derogatory” idea of society being preoccupied with the acquisition of consumer goods. Since healthcare consumerism is intended to represent a more positive movement, I am going to lay it all out on the table.

Consumerism, in relation to healthcare, is about moving past the perception that someone else is responsible to make decisions for us. We need to shift our thinking to be more actively engaged in our health and healthcare decisions.

Think about it – active participation and education prior to decision-making occurs in almost every other industry and consumer purchase… e.g. automobiles, electronics, home buying. Why are we so inclined to remain a bystander when it comes to healthcare? We need to move past the era of the passive patient.

Read the rest of this entry »

Good thing I have health insurance… cause I’m not ready to be married!!! Seems in a recent article by the New York Times “Health Benefits Inspire Rush to the Alter” that 7% of adults say that someone in their household had married in the past year to gain access to health insurance (according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study).

Now at first glance that doesn’t seem like a large number, however I think it is important to not consider the actual amount of individuals who have married for insurance, but rather that they are willing to make a life changing decision in order to obtain health insurance coverage (the Foundation also cautions not to take the number literally).

I find this to be so interesting, and admittedly it could be due to my young age (23). But I simply cannot decide if it is better to be without health insurance coverage for myself (I am sure many of these decisions involve children) and suffer the burden of a system that shuns individuals without coverage, piling on bill after bill, or to get married. To marry or not to marry – for health benefits???

Ok lets get back to the basics – money and marriage are undeniably linked. The government provides tax “incentives” to married couples, some people simply marry for money, and dowries existed for centuries. But I feel pretty good in assuming “marrying for health insurance” is something that has recently taken flight due to the consistent increase in insurance premiums and healthcare costs.

The distress caused by these issues makes me nervous.. first for the upcoming election, and the next presidents willingness to address and hopefully solve these problems. Second, because I do not feel like we (American citizens) have a tangible grasp on a solution to rising healthcare costs. And third, not everyone is feeling the pain. This means that some people are struggling with their healthcare costs daily, while others are still frivolously accessing the system, paying their $20 copay, and having no idea of the real cost of their care.

Here’s an example of the other extreme. Mr. Moulton and his wife, who has liver damage, considered divorce. This was the only way she could qualify for affordable health insurance coverage which would have been provided and subsidized by the state. She said, “Nobody should have to make a choice like that. What happened to our country? I don’t remember growing up like this.”

Scary… gives me chills. Core family values are hard to maintain when you are broke, sick and uninsured. It makes me wonder what will happen to my generation if we do not get involved, control our costs, find a solution – but most importantly try to make a difference. I mean we are already marrying for health benefits… what’s next?