The Alaska Division of Insurance launched a tool this month to help Alaskans better understand the costs of common health care procedures. The new database, the Alaska Health Payment Utilization Database (HPUD), will compare costs for Medicaid and Medicare, Premera, and Moda. Moda and Premera are the two biggest private insurance providers in the state.
Lori Wing-Heier, who directs the state division of insurance, said she hopes Alaskans use the database to better examine their health care charges.
“If you're looking to have a procedure or a treatment or such, and you can see that the average cost is $200 on the database, but yet, your quote that you had from your provider is $600, well, somewhere–again, we're averaging things–there's a provider that's less than $600,” Wing-Heier said.
Alaska’s health care costs are the highest in the country and some of the highest in the world. She said creating the database is one of the first steps in a long journey to help bring down those costs.
Wing-Heier said reducing health care costs overall is a priority for Gov. Mike Dunleavy and his administration.
“We are addressing it, but this is a problem that's going back 50 years, and it's going to take time to resolve it,” she said.
She said the database will also be a useful tool for legislators and policy-makers. It may allow them to advocate for higher Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement rates for Alaska.
“To me, the biggest advantage of this tool is going to be working with our counterparts in DC and elsewhere across the state, all payers, to say that if something costs $650 the providers should be reimbursed $650 as a minimum,” Wing-Heier said. “There's got to be parity for the cost.”
Right now, Medicare and Medicaid are reimbursed for treatments and procedures at much lower rates than private insurance, which means providers in Alaska sometimes shift those costs to other insurance plans. Wing-Heier said that’s part of what makes health care so expensive in the state.
Alaskans can access the health cost database through the state’s commerce website.
