Very interesting statistics Tony. I've often said that we spend more time at Walmart, Target and Circuit City price shopping for everything from clothing to electronics then we do shopping for health care.

In the past the single driving factor behind the adoption and increase in consumer driven health care is one word - insurance. The adage of "I have insurance" has always made the consumer not care about price. As more and more enter the ranks of the uninsured or have their health insurance coverage reduced we are seeing more consumer interest in price.

I actually think the health care insurance crisis might be good for the marketplace in the long run. Hospitals and physicians are having to deal with patients without insurance coverage more and more. For an interesting personal story on "cash" payment check this post out that I did a while back.
http://healthcarebloglaw.blogspot.com/2005/10/personal-story-on-health-care-provider.html

My dad, a retired country doctor in West Virginia, who practiced from 1950 thru 1994 has told me of the day when families would be going out of town for the week and needed a place for grandmother or grandfather to stay. They would check them into the hospital for a week stay and insurance would pick up the full tab, no questions asked.

interesting link! I was just talking to a friend yesterday who is expecting - which "peace-of-mind" tests should they take? If insurance doesn't cover those tests, are they willing to pay $500 for peace of mind?

I agree that consumer-driven healthcare will be a positive and relentless force to drive change. As such, more than ever before, hospitals have to have the business leadership skills to compete. How will hospitals handle the increase in very informed (and very misinformed) patients?

If your car is about to die you shop around, However, if you are about to
you get to the nearest hospital.

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The discussions about consumer driven healthcare usually assume that we have some kind of a market driven system in place. Just the opposite!
The current situation is far from consumer/patient friendly. It is all about big corporations/insurance companies, drug companies, and huge health organizations, all in bed with the big government, and their regulations. The regulations are carefully crafted not to hurt the major players, that is, the government, and the large companies.

Instead, the major players should be the physicians and the patients!

Whenever there is talk about consumer driven health, some commentators argue against the consumer driven healthcare, based on the assumption that people do not want to take responsibility to educate themselves sufficiently to be able to make their own health decisions. This clearly is a huge assumption, based on little data. Fact is, we, (US or the world) never had consumer or market driven healthcare. Never. If you want to call high-deductible insurance plans combined with an HSA or similar attempts in dentistry like Find a local dentist market driven health care, you ain't seen nothing yet. So basically, we never had consumer really make decisions so far. So there is no data. Get seriously started with it, collect your data, and then create opinions. Otherwise its all hot air and keyboard clicking. Also, keep in mind, in a true market driven health care, an average Joe does not need to take care of the health system, just of his own health, and his own choices for healthcare. Many of us are doing that today, successfully.