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1. Openly disclose all prices – so the real price of all health care services and products is always visible and openly disclosed. 
2. Unitary Pricing – so we all pay the same price for the same product or service, like ordering from a restaurant menu. Show us your price, and then charge every citizen the same.
3. Create a risk pool of 300 million to reduce prices for all of us, with absolutely no discrimination against any citizen due to any pre-existing conditions.

Yesterday, I questioned Solutions #2 and #3 – struck by the hypocrisy of it all. So on to Solution #1.

Solution #1: Kagen’s own medical practice doesn’t follow it.
In a Chicago Trib article, widely touted by Kagen and his crew, Clarence Page wrote that Kagen campaigned on ideas to “allow everyone to benefit from the efficient delivery of affordable care in a transparent and competitive marketplace.”

As a result of transparency claims in the Page piece, I e-mailed Kagen’s D.C. Communications Director Curtis Ellis:

•  “Do you have information about price lists used by the four Kagen Allergy Clinics, how widely they’re available, and how ‘unitary’ the pricing? If you don’t have that information, do you have a contact with the Clinics that Dr. Kagen prefers be used for such inquiries?”

A week and a half went by with no response – and Ellis is typically very responsive and very helpful. So I called him. And called him. And we traded phone messages. And finally he got the official word from on high for me and kindly and helpfully sent a response.

•  “Dr. Kagen ran for Congress to guarantee universal access to affordable care for every Citizen. Dr. Kagen no longer owns or controls the Kagen Allergy Clinics, but the clinic does inform patients about their potential charges whenever asked, just like other medical clinics do all across the nation." 

So Dr. Kagen’s first cop-out is that he’s no longer an owner of his eponymous clinic (primarily because of patient privacy considerations I believe, as otherwise, all detailed revenue information would need be released). For crying out loud, Kagen ran on the premise that he had this successful medical practice and as a result, he could be counted on to solve the nation’s health care woes. Now he can’t be associated with it? Well, he is associated with it, he sees patients there regularly, and he owned it for years. So if you had these deep-seated beliefs about the health care system, wouldn’t you make changes in your own backyard first?

I asked at the Appleton Kagen Clinic for a list of services and related prices. I was told no, there is no list of services. And yes, they could give me approximate prices. Then came “What is this for?” Well, I was honest (“for my news site, FoxPolitics.net”). So now I have to talk to the good doctor in charge, Dr. Kagen’s former partner. I was told he wasn’t in and that he’d have to decide whether to contact me or not.

So, no posted service list. No service list at all. As of yet, no price list. Certainly not posted and always visible. No complete answers to my questions. Certainly no transparency.

If you really believed in a foolproof way to transform health care in America, would you be doing everything you could to put them in practice, to create your own little Petri dish in your own laboratory? Boy, I sure would.

Yes, transparency is one place where Kagen’s got it right. Transparency of price, transparency of quality ratings and rankings. Now Dr. Kagen, do it.

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