Reference-based pricing has become an attractive option for self-insured employers to use in their attempts to drive down rising health benefit costs. Reference-based pricing, in theory, allows patient consumers to shop for better, value-based, lower-cost care.

The method, which caps payments for services and procedures at a certain percentage relative to a benchmark, or “reference,” price (typically, Medicare’s reimbursement rate for the same service) requires full price transparency — notoriously elusive — to work.

But a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that patient consumers don’t shop their healthcare enough, even when price transparency tools are made readily available to them.

This may reflect market conditioning that healthcare consumers have received over the past few decades — historically, US consumers have had few opportunities for realistic healthcare price comparison, so they fail to take advantage of them when available.

If true, patient consumer engagement and education efforts could make price comparison shopping more commonplace — and drive down costs — as more pricing transparency efforts make headway.

Get the full story plus analysis here, from Medscape‘s Marsha Frellick.