Delayed hospital-fee site 'a shame and a problem,' Baker says

If you wondered what happened to plans for a web site that would show how much insurers pay hospitals for up to 40 procedures they perform, there's an answer in the Boston Business Journal and a response on Charlie Baker's blog, Let's Talk Health Care.

"It’s more difficult to complete than we’ve expected," Katharine London, executive director of the Massachusetts Health Care Quality and Cost Council, tells the BBJ.

The ambitious project, set in motion by the state's two-year old healthcare law, is supposed to help patients see how much having a baby or a bypass will cost, for example, depending on the insurance they have and the hospital they go to. That's especially important for consumers who have to pay a deductible before their coverage kicks in, the BBJ story notes.

So why hasn't it gotten off the ground?

Baker, who is head of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and a member of the Health Care Quality and Cost Council, says don't blame the insurers. It's the collective fault of the council and its lack of consensus, both on how important it is to make the data public and how to go about doing it, he says.

"The tragedy of the delay is the lost opportunity — now going on four years — to engage in a data driven discussion about what’s driving up health care costs," he writes. "Without it, it’s all anecdotes and misrepresentations."

One example he seizes on is a comment by analyst Marc Bard in a Globe story about Cape Cod Health Care in which he says insurance companies' payments to hospitals have been flat for years.

"I can promise you that no hospital we deal with in Massachusetts has been getting flat payments from us for the past few years," Baker writes on his blog. "I also don’t pretend to know what the other carriers in MA are up to, but I’d be astonished if their experience was any different than ours."

So that's where public data comes in, or should, he concludes.

"This delay is a shame and problem," he writes. "Until we get serious about public reporting on health care cost and quality, we will continue to rely on misinformation, personal anecdotes, rumor and mythology."