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Thursday, July 9, 2009

Women Better Patients Than Men

A new study by CIGNA reports that women are 1/3 more likely to check prices of medical procedures than men are: 20% of women checked prices versus only 15% of men. Remarkably, some of them seem to enjoy it.

This is an interesting finding, and one that I would never have thought to pursue. Why did CIGNA do it? My guess us that men will soon be getting messages that we should bring our wives to the doctor with us: It may motivate us to swich to generic prescriptions, when appropriate, to keep costs down.

What will the government do to screw this up? I can see a flood of nonsense from the political class that consumer-driven health care is disadvantagous to women (which is actually an old tactic), because they are "forced" to make decisions about treatment based on costs.

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