UsableMarkets

That dang thought arises again upon reading this interview over at Crossover Health (which, truth be told, sounds more like an athletic activity than a blog about Health 2.0).

Anyway, I left this thought (or comment, I suppose you could call it), over there, and I repeat here for your benefit. It’s in response to Dr. Shreeve’s contention that Health 2.0 is more about transparency than anything else.

While I love the idea that Health 2.0 is about transparency, I see precious few Health 2.0 companies that are focused on the most important area that needs to be transparent for the market to work: price.

There are many Health 2.0 companies that are about searching for medical information, and about bringing together patient (or doctor) groups, but off the top of my head I can only think of Vimo (hospital published prices) and OutOfPocket.com (patient provided) that are bringing transparency to pricing (successfully?).

Of course, the companies that have it in their power to provide transparent pricing – insurance companies – are decidedly 1.0, and don’t seem very interested in this.

However, I’m more than happy to be wrong, and if you have other examples of Health 2.0 companies that are effectively bringing transparency to healthcare services pricing I would love to see them (and write about them for usableMarkets.com).

As always, thanks for listening.
~alex