One of the clients I worked for last year had a software tool employees could use where they entered a ton of personal medical information for each member of their family. The worksheet showed average annual costs of treating each person -- annual wellness checks, allergy shots, diabetes treatment, etc. etc. After you made your way through the entire worksheet, up popped a page showing each of the health plan options, what each plan would have paid for, and what your out-of-pocket costs would be under each plan. It was all based on average costs and it only covered common things, but it was a damned sight better than anything I have available to me.
The amount of variance within any price/treatment structure is so profound that it would be hard to come up with a meaningful data set like you can with calories and such. My insurance company gave me some average amounts paid by other members of the plan, broken into low, medium, and high cost categories. Even with them shaving off the outliers at the top and bottom, the range still went from something like $31 to $302 for one of the ordinary lab tests that you wouldn't think could possibly vary so much in meaning or cost.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-03-08 09:17 pm (UTC)The amount of variance within any price/treatment structure is so profound that it would be hard to come up with a meaningful data set like you can with calories and such. My insurance company gave me some average amounts paid by other members of the plan, broken into low, medium, and high cost categories. Even with them shaving off the outliers at the top and bottom, the range still went from something like $31 to $302 for one of the ordinary lab tests that you wouldn't think could possibly vary so much in meaning or cost.