Enterprise Health Care Can Be Fixed With Big Data

The ups and downs of Obamacare — from its passage to its rollout and now implementation — have consumed Washington, D.C., and American politics.

But for those who run companies — and provide health insurance to more than half of all Americans — not much has fundamentally changed. Health care is still a business disease: U.S. enterprises spend more than $620 billion on health care annually, according to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and costs are increasing by eight to 10 percentevery year. Strikingly, one recent survey found that health care — not revenue, not performance — is the No. 1 concern of CFOs.

Castlight Health

The truth is that enterprise health care is not going to be fixed in the Beltway — it’s going to be fixed in the cloud and with Big Data. The cure is to be found in code, not on Capitol Hill.

The problem with enterprise health care rests in the fact that the marketplace for health care is merit-free. It is characterized by an asymmetry of information between those who are providing care and those paying for it — both the employer and the employee, who is often now responsible for a high deductible or co-pay. This map shows price disparities in 30 markets across four common procedures. Moreover, the health-care marketplace is devoid of transparency and accountability.

Read more on this story at re/code.