As health care reform dominates the news, most consumers will benefit from remembering that there are things they can be doing today – before any meaningful reform occurs – to help drive down their health care expenditures.  Creating affordable health care has as much to do with consumers taking the time to educate themselves on purchases as it does on what Washington decides to do.

That is one of the reasons that HealthHarbor.com was created.   HealthHarbor is an online information source dedicated to helping people become smarter consumers of health care.  By offering dozens of pages of original content on money-saving techniques and using health coverage effectively, as well as providing online tools to help people make their health care dollar go further, HealthHarbor is excited to be one of the pioneers, along with Outofpocket.com, in helping drive education and price transparency to the industry.

While there are dozens of ways that health consumers can save on costs through increased education, HealthHarbor’s content is particularly useful in these three areas:

1.    Ensuring consumers understand how to be assertive and thoughtful clients of their health coverage.  Many people have health coverage, but when it comes time to use it they are in over their heads.  Having an uneducated consumer trying to work through issues with professionals employed by an insurer can create for very unbalanced discussions.  Arming people with the information to be intelligent about their coverage is critical in this environment.

2.    Helping people make good coverage purchase decisions.  Even if someone has insurance, it doesn’t mean they have the right coverage.  Sometimes people have policies that don’t cover their particular medical needs, and other times they are paying a $500 price tag for premiums when their medical needs could be better served by a hybrid plan that may cost half that.  Still other times, people are buying coverage that they don’t really need.  Given the amount of money that is spent on monthly premiums, the point of purchase decision is critical to managing your family health care budget.

3.    Making smarter decisions when seeking care.  Being able to make an educated financial decision week seeking medical care requires information, and that information is becoming more and more available thanks to sites like OutofPocket.com and HealthHarbor.com.  Whether someone is trying to figure out what a routine medical service will cost them, or determining where they can find affordable prescriptions, adding price transparency to the health care industry is critical and is fortunately happening thanks to innovative sites like these.

     Article by Heather Johnson, Healthharbor.com