Ponder this: Your roof suddenly starts leaking after a bad storm. First thing in the morning you call your insurance adjuster, check out potential contractors with friends, and then get a couple of bids for the job. After picking the best — but not necessarily the cheapest — bid, you’re confident your roof will be fixed right. That’s being a smart consumer, right?
Now consider this scenario: Your foot suddenly starts hurting after a vigorous weekend workout. You call your insurance company to get your coverage, get recommendations from friends, and get a couple of competitive bids to find out who can fix you up. Right? Not so much.
Unfortunately, it seems that even the smartest consumers tend to lose their intelligence when it comes to health care. We immediately rush to the clinic when our children cough, sneeze, or develop fevers rather than make a call and have a nurse triage the situation over the phone. And just like we do when we rush into a bad home improvement job, we pay the price for our bad consumerism. Our personal health care costs are out of control, and considering our behavior, we might be partially to blame.
For the most part, we can’t control when we get sick or hurt — although some would argue that we could do a better job of taking care of ourselves and taking more safety precautions to prevent illness and injury. We could quit smoking, wear our seatbelts, and eat healthier diets — just like we prevent damage to our roofs by getting the extra snow off the eaves and making sure there are no low-hanging dead branches near our house.
Okay, so let’s say we take perfect care of ourselves but we still get sick or injured. Then what? That’s when we need to be extra careful with our decisions. Whether it’s a $25,000 roof or a $25,000 foot surgery, it’s still a consumer decision, and it requires the best information. For years, the Better Business Bureau has been saying, “Check before you buy.” Once you’ve signed on the dotted line and committed to a purchase, your options quickly diminish. The best way to have a great purchase experience is to do your homework before you buy.
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So, just for fun, let’s apply this strategy to our health care providers. Let’s check, ask, and get all our options before making decisions. If you think you might be coming down with something, why not call a nurse and find out what’s going around and what signs tell you that you need to be seen by a doctor? Or if you’ve been injured and your doctor is ordering an MRI, why not call a few providers and get their prices? Obviously, some emergency decisions need to be made quickly, and we don’t always have the luxury of time. However, when we do have time, knowing more is never going to be a detriment.
So amid the confusion and chaos of health care reform, don’t lose sight of the one thing that remains constant: your ability to control your own buying decisions.
Kimberly Hazen is the regional director for the southwest region of the Wisconsin Better Business Bureau. In her role, she works to advance marketplace trust between buyers and sellers and to promote informed buying decisions.
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