Deyling: Use available resources to make health choices

Open enrollment for purchasing health insurance on the exchange begins on Nov. 1 and ends on Jan. 31. For many, including people who buy health insurance through employers, it remains a daunting and complicated purchase. What we have learned during the first two years of the Affordable Care Act is that the confusion doesn’t end at the initial purchase.

Many people don’t realize the additional cost beyond premiums for health-care services, especially if they have high-deductible policies. They also may not know where to find cost information so they can factor additional out-of-pocket expenses into their decision-making, or where to go to evaluate their doctor or hospital.

We applaud the Aug. 10 guest column that challenged people to arm themselves with information when making important health-care decisions (“How does your hospital rate, and how much does it matter?”). But perhaps the larger story is that there is a groundswell of demand for cost and quality transparency in health care, and the market is responding.

Several years ago, BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina launched our own online tool, the Treatment Cost Estimator. For the first few years, it was used infrequently. The good news is that the number of people using our estimator is growing year over year. Not by leaps and bounds, but at a steady pace. We encourage our members to take advantage of this personalized online tool and, frankly, wish more would.

We encourage people to gather as much information as possible when making health-care coverage and service decisions and believe that a movement toward greater cost and health-care quality transparency is healthy for everyone.