Taking My Insurance Out For a Test Drive

I heard a commercial this morning talking about a “test drive” for drivers insurance. It made me think that with data standards this would be a pretty easy thing in healthcare.

Imagine that every year for open enrollment you would simply create a file of all your claims from the prior 12 months and upload them at some website “TestMyHealthInsurance.com”. That website would show your employer sponsored options along with individual insurance options and show you what your total out of pocket costs would be under each scenario (assuming the same claims).

We had an application like this at Express Scripts called ExpressChoice which allowed members to compare their next year’s pharmacy plan options based on the prior year’s claims. It was a very cool tool. Of course, there are limitations, but it’s much better than most of us have.

So, why not extrapolate that to a bigger market play and include health and pharmacy. Given all the exclusions and other small print in our policies, it is always impossible to compare.

Now, if you really wanted to blow people away, guarantee that the costs per claim for the same drug, treatment, etc. won’t deviate from the forecasted price by more than 10% year-over-year. I think you would capture some attention here.