Perspectives
You Can’t Shop for What You Don’t See
Why Healthcare’s “Transparent” Plans Still Leave You in the Dark
“You can’t shop for what you don’t see.”
— Uwe Reinhardt, Princeton health economist
It’s one of the most powerful — and painfully accurate — truths in American healthcare. For decades, we’ve talked about giving consumers more responsibility and “skin in the game.” But how can you ask someone to shop smarter when the price tag is still missing?
Let’s compare what today’s most “innovative” health plans really offer — and why they still fall short.
Fragmented Transparency: The Surest and RBP Dilemma
Plans like Surest claim to give members price visibility. In reality, they show partial prices for partial services. Think of it like shopping for a vacation where the app shows airfare, but not hotel, baggage fees, or meals. The sticker shock hits when the bill does.
Reference-Based Pricing (RBP) plans promise lower costs by fixing provider reimbursements at a set multiple of Medicare. But they don’t provide real-time pricing visibility for the member — and the price still varies based on complications, surprise bills, or provider disputes.
In both models, the consumer is forced to shop for fragments:
- One price for a surgeon
- A separate one for imaging
- A different one for anesthesia
- And another for the facility
This isn’t transparency. It’s a puzzle.
What Real Transparency Looks Like
Oxbridge Health’s Episode Benefit Plans flip the script.
Instead of prices for individual services, Oxbridge offers a single guaranteed price for an entire episode of care. That means everything — consults, surgery, imaging, follow-ups — is rolled into one bundled price before care begins.
- You see the full cost.
- You see your share.
- You see how you can save.
- You see all your options — and you control the choice.
This is the difference between shopping by aisle and buying the whole cart with one clear receipt.
The Power of Seeing Everything
When consumers can see the whole care journey, everything changes:
- They compare value across full care teams, not just facilities
- They earn savings by choosing high-value bundles
- They gain confidence in what’s covered and what isn’t
- They start behaving like real healthcare shoppers — not passive participants
Episode Advantage™, the proprietary engine inside Oxbridge plans, uses predictive engagement and guided messaging to nudge consumers to the best choices — not just dump prices in front of them.
Side-by-Side: RBP vs. Oxbridge
It’s Not Just Transparency. It’s Functional Transparency.
Reinhardt was right — consumers can’t shop for what they can’t see. But just as importantly, they won’t shop unless it’s easy.
Oxbridge doesn’t just expose pricing. It makes care shoppable.
And it makes choosing high-value care rewarding.
This is how real markets work. This is how we finally inject agency, predictability, and trust into a broken system.
Final Thought
If Surest is a better user interface for a broken system…and RBP is a blunt tool to cap cost extremes…