Will consumers shop for more cost-effective medical care?

That’s the billion-dollar question both business and healthpolicy leaders have been asking over the past decade.

Last year, the Health Care Cost Institute found that 47 percentof the $524.2 billion spent on health care by individuals withemployer-sponsored insurance was shoppable. That’s $246 Billiondollars of shoppable care.

Shoppable services are common health care procedures that can be researched(“shopped”) in advance.

They’re services that are available from multiple providers in amarket (i.e., competition). And they’re services that have dataabout the prices and quality or have little to no differencebetween them, such as MRIs and lab work.

The HCCI definition factored in hundreds of different outpatientand inpatient services and procedures.

But as the CEO of a company that helps employees shop for healthcare, we estimate that nearly $80 billion could be saved from onlyfour routine procedures.

Yes, just four – colonoscopies, CT Scans, mammograms andMRIs.

Through claims data, employers who give their workforce thetools to shop for CT scans save an average of $507. Each year,there are 80 million CTs performed in the United State.

Multiply that and the potential savings on that service alone is$40.6 billion.

Apply the same math to other shoppable procedures. Shoppers save$586 on average.

If the 34.8 million MRIs were shopped each year, the savingswould be $20.3 Billion. If we shopped the 14.2 millioncolonoscopies performed each year, we could save $16.6 Billion. Andthere’s more than $2.4 Billion to be saved on the 39 million annualmammograms.

The point is that we don’t need to boil the oceans to reduce thecost of health care drastically.

Business leaders can educate their workforce about theout-of-pocket benefits of shopping for just these four procedures.Further, they can incentivize them to shop for better value care,giving them a reason to change their behavior. Finally, they canwork with their health plan or another third-party to delivertargeted messages when it comes time to have these procedures.

Since 2016, HealthTrust, an employee benefits pool that serves47,000 public sector workers and their families in New Hampshire,saved over $1 million on just these four services over the past twoyears.

When employees needed medical care, they simply shopped onlineor via a call center. Employees were free to go to any provider innetwork. But they were paid when they chose a better valuefacility, earning $150 on average for a MRI and $40 for amammogram.

HealthTrust’s shopping program includes only 30 shoppablemedical services and procedures. Neither the employer nor theirhealth plan had to renegotiate prices with providers. Yet, over thepast two years, several providers have called the sponsoring healthplan to right-market rates. In one instance, the CFO of a majorhospital dropped pricing for MRIs by 55 percent.

That reduces costs for everyone in the system. But forHealthTrust, shopping employees reduced the company’s overallmedical spend by 4 percent in 2016. They’re expected to do the samein 2017.

These results are exciting, but they shouldn’t be surprising.When patients control the marginal dollars, health caremarketplaces emerge. For instance, the cost of conventionalLasik decreased 25 percent from 1999 to 2011. The cost of a tummytuck decreased by 45 percent from 1998 to 2015.

Employers need to empower employees to create the competitionand subsequent health cost reductions not only for their ownfinancial health, but for the corporate bottom line, too.