Aetna, Humana and UnitedHealth to develop transparency tools

Aetna (NYSE:AET), Humana (NYSE:HUM) and UnitedHealthcare (NYSE:UNH) will team up with the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) to develop online tools to enhance members' experiences, while also providing the most important information about price and quality of their coverage, the HCCI announced today. Additional players--Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Health Net, Kaiser Permanente and Partners HealthCare--are in the midst of developing consumer transparency standards that will help implement value-based health plan designs. HCCI will, in turn, use these ideas to develop quality transparency initiatives of its own. "HCCI's transparency tools will give consumers a single, comprehensive destination for data on health care cost and quality to help them make more informed decisions about treatments and services," said David Newman, executive director of HCCI. Announcement