“It was 2 in the morning when Annette Alexander rushed her daughter Cherie to Abington-Lansdale Hospital with throbbing head pain,” Sarah Gantz writes over at partner philly.com. “The 24-year-old’s two-hour visit for what turned out to be a migraine headache led to a bill of $1,642. But in her haste, Alexander had left the family’s new insurance card at home. The Montgomery County hospital discounted the bill under its uninsured patient program, to $821. Realizing the error, Alexander called the hospital to provide the insurance information and soon got a new bill. The $1,642 charge had again been reduced, but this time to the insurer’s negotiated rate: $1,214.” Sarah Gantz, “How having health insurance spiked her hospital bill by $400,” Philly.com.
Jeanne Pinder is the founder and CEO of ClearHealthCosts. She worked at The New York Times for almost 25 years as a reporter, editor and human resources executive, then volunteered for a buyout and founded ClearHealthCosts.
With Pinder at the helm, ClearHealthCosts shared honors for the top network public service journalism project in a partnership with CBS News, as well as winning numerous other journalism prizes.
She was previously a fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at the Columbia University School of Journalism. ClearHealthCosts has won grants from the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York; the International Women’s Media Foundation; the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation with KQED public radio in San Francisco and KPCC in Los Angeles; the Lenfest Foundation in Philadelphia for a partnership with The Philadelphia Inquirer; and the New York State Health Foundation for a partnership with WNYC public radio/Gothamist in New York; and other honors.
She is one of Crain’s Notable Women in Tech. Niemanlab wrote of ClearHealthCosts that “The Internet hates secrets.”
Her TED talk about fixing health costs has surpassed 2 million views.