Media Center

HealthMarkets in the News

Date: August 15, 2006
Making health care more affordable

Kudos to the Tribune for putting a spotlight on what should be a very basic, easy process: Shopping for a doctor or hospital ("Pricing health care? It’s not that easy," Page 1, Aug. 10). With premiums for health insurance plans rising ahead the current rate of inflation, providing price and quality transparency, as well as plan flexibility will be key ingredients to ensure consumers can continue to afford health insurance. Letting consumers know out-of-pocket costs ahead of time is a foreign concept in today’s health care system and that needs to change.

Our company helped create the category of consumer-guided health insurance, and today we offer our customers quality information and cost rankings on more than 400,000 doctors and 4,000 hospitals and medical centers. Armed with this information our customers are better able to manage their health care costs.

We believe informed consumers make wiser, more cost-effective health care decisions. By aligning the power of consumer involvement with tools that bring transparency and free market principles to health care, we can make health care more affordable.

William J. Gedwed

President and Chief Executive Officer

HealthMarkets, Inc.