The Star Tribune reports on the growing number of consumers in Minnesota now shopping for health care.  The story reports that a number of Minnesota providers, including the Mayo Clinic, have recently cut prices in response to increasing requests for the price of medical procedures.   

Prices for medical procedures are increasingly transparent to Minnesotans.  Those insured by three of Minnesota's four major health insurers can actually access pricing information through their insurer's respective websites. 

Some provider groups have set up phone lines solely devoted to price inquiries.  Park Nicollet, one of Minnesota's largest health care delivery systems, provides pricing for a wide assortment of procedures on their website.

The Minnesota Hospital Association maintains a website, MNHospitalPriceCheck.org, where anyone can compare the price of 50 common inpatient procedures and 25 common same-day procedures.  This website was actually mandated by state law in 2005.

While MinuteClinics -- those convenient clinics that actually post prices on the wall -- have struggled to take root in some states due to pushback by competition leery providers (such as in Illinois and Massachusetts and, specifically, the Massachusetts Medical Society), they've been quite successful in Minnesota, MinuteClinic's corporate headquarters.  

Minnesota is clearly ahead of the curve, largely because price transparency is now the law of land (at least the land of 10,000 lakes).  Minnesota lawmakers passed Minnesota's first price transparency law in 2004 and have since refined and reinforced the law in 2006 and 2007. In addition to the hospital pricing website, current state law requires the following:

• At the customer's request, providers must provide consumers with a good faith estimate of the reimbursement they will receive from the customer's insurer.
• If the customer is uninsured, the provider must also provide a good faith estimate.
• Health plans must also provide, at the request of a customer, a good faith estimate of the reimbursement rate they expect to a pay a provider.
• Further, health plans must provide an estimate of an enrollee's out-of-pocket costs for a health care service.