Milwaukee-based Assurant Health will join three other major health insurance companies to work with the Health Care Cost Institute as it develops free online tools aimed at offering consumers comprehensive information about the price and quality of health care services.
The HCCI, which was launched in 2011 to promote independent, nonpartisan research and analysis on the causes of the rise in U.S. health spending, expects the new transparency tools to be available in early 2015.
“HCCI’s transparency tools will give consumers a single, comprehensive destination for data on health care cost and quality to help them make more informed decisions about treatments and services,” said David Newman, the executive director of HCCI. “By participating in this expanding initiative, these organizations are helping to ensure the sustainability of the U.S. health system.”
HCCI’s tools will aggregate data from commercial health plans with the intention of ultimately linking it to data from Medicare Advantage and Medicaid health plans. Participating insurers will continue to offer their own transparency tools and solutions in addition to contributing to HCCI’s platform.
The other three health insurance companies working with HCCI in addition to Assurant are Aetna, Humana and UnitedHealthcare.
