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Let people shop for health care

A team of researchers examined what happens when hundreds of thousands of people are given access to a website that provides prices for various medical procedures.

By Peter R. Orszag | Updated on October 22, 2014
(AP Photo/M. Spencer Green, File)

If people knew the prices of medical treatments, and if they paid partly from their own pockets, they might shop around and save money. This stands to reason, and a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows it’s true. This comes as very encouraging news for the wider effort to keep going the profound deceleration in health costs we’ve seen over the past several years.

A team of researchers led by Christopher Whaley of the University of California at Berkeley and Castlight Health examined what happens when hundreds of thousands of people are given access to a website that provides prices for various medical procedures.

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