Florida prepares to launch site for health care costs without state's largest insurer

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Rick Scott's administration is planning an initial launch of a $4 million website designed to give Floridians greater transparency on health care costs without data from the state’s largest commercial insurer, the head of the state's health agency said.

The rollout that will initially not include information from Florida Blue has raised questions about how complete the Florida Health Finder database will be for consumers expecting to see the average cost of medical care across the state.

“We share that concern with people and we are making sure that the information that is out there is a critical mass of data for it to be accurate and relevant,” Justin Senior, the secretary at the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration, said in an interview with the Naples Daily News.

Senior acknowledged that not having Florida Blue, which has 5 million members, could temporarily leave those areas in Florida where the company is the largest provider without information about the cost of medical procedures.

“The absence of Florida Blue will have an impact on certain areas, and facilities won’t have data on how much procedures costs,” Senior said. “There are some instances where it will make a difference, but other areas will be fine and will have useful information for consumers.”

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The transparency price website was born through legislation signed by Scott in 2016. State Rep. Chris Sprowls, a key Republican from Palm Harbor who pushed the transparency price initiative, said AHCA should ensure the intent of the law is met before it rolls out the website to the public. 

"The ultimate goal is to provide transparency price costs to all of the people across the state," Sprowls said.

When lawmakers pushed for the transparency website, they did so to give consumers more power in the health care market.

“We were hearing from people that they would go get a procedure done and get crushed [financially], so we wanted to make health care a more transparent process,” Sprowls said.

Currently, the website has data from Aetna, Humana and United. Florida Blue, which in 2016 accounted for 41 percent of the state's private health insurance market, has until September to submit all its claims data based on deadlines set by AHCA in April.

“We are currently compiling the data and working with AHCA and its contractors to securely transfer the information to them in accordance with the guidelines they provided us,” said Christie DeNave, a spokeswoman for Florida Blue.

Those guidelines were finalized a month after top state health regulators estimated the transparency site would roll out by the middle of May, according to documents obtained by the Naples Daily News last week. That has not happened, and AHCA would not provide a specific time frame for the launch.

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After awarding a multimillion-dollar contract last January to the Health Care Cost Institute to build the site and database, it took AHCA a "significant time" to complete the rule-making process that gave insurers deadlines and guidelines to submit their data, said Mallory McManus, an agency spokeswoman.

“It is really complicated because there is so little price information out there and it’s regarded as a closely held secret and the keys to the kingdom,” he said.

As anticipation builds for the launch, the state’s largest hospital lobby group has also raised concerns about the steps the state is taking to verify the data that is published on the site.

In a letter sent Tuesday to AHCA, Florida Hospital Association President Bruce Rueben said he was surprised and disappointed to learn the state had “no plans to validate pricing data.”

“This is in direct conflict with public databases developed by the federal government as well as previous efforts by AHCA,” Rueben wrote.

The association wants AHCA to allow hospitals to verify the accuracy of the hospital-specific pricing information that will be displayed on the website. AHCA has not yet indicated its stance on the request.