Health insurance price data available but tough to access

Health insurers are now publishing the cost of nearly every healthcare service they've negotiated with providers, but that data is "just not accessible to mere mortals," Georgetown University researcher Sabrina Corlette told Kaiser Health News in a July 27 article.   

The data posted to public websites can be hard to access, according to the report. In part, it's because of the size of the data, but also because each insurer approaches it differently. Cigna, for example, requires a long URL be cut and pasted into a browser to get to a table of contents of the price files. Others, like UnitedHealthcare, created websites that directly list a table of contents. 

UnitedHealthcare's website warns that the table of contents could take up to five minutes to load, according to the report. When it does load, there are more than 45,000 entries, each listed by the year and name of the plan or employer for job-based policies.  

Congress and policymakers anticipated that private firms and researchers would organize the data, according to the report. One of those companies, Turquoise, told Kaiser Health News it hopes to share organized data with its paying customers soon and for free later. 

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