Episode 37: Making Healthcare Costs Transparent with Ethan Steininger from Compared Care
March 26, 201534:35

Episode 37: Making Healthcare Costs Transparent with Ethan Steininger from Compared Care

Ethan worked at Johns Hopkins University conducting clinical research with patients which initiated his interest in the consumer-centric healthcare experience.
He later worked at a Medical Billing and EHR software company. While there he discovered many of the problems patients face with understanding their medical bills.

Ethan was inspired to solve this discrepancy by creating a minimalistic healthcare information portal for consumers to compare healthcare services among providers in their area.

Some of Ethan’s colleagues and classmates have joined the Compared Care team including Brandon, Compared Care’s CTO and Ethan’s co-founder.

Compared Care is the winner of several awards including UMBC’s first ever Cangialosi Business Innovation Competition.


00:00 Ethan talks about ComparedCare.
00:20 ComparedCare is a free web platform where consumers can compare providers.
03:00 The price of a service like an MRI can vary by thousands of dollars.
03:10 “Non-transparency breeds price discrepancies.”
04:00 ComparedCare allows not only patients to compare prices of providers, but providers to compare the cost of their services with what other providers charge.
07:11 ComparedCare brings patients the ability not only to find a provider who can give them the care they need, but also one who can provide the service at a price they can afford.
12:30 New York is now mandating that medical prices become transparent, causing an uproar with some hospitals.
13:00 “The only way to create innovation is to bring change.”
16:20 The quality value system: can patients determine quality care from providers well enough to navigate the decision between price and quality of care?
21:00 HIPAA compliance with ComparedCare.
28:50 How transparency can improve situations with surprise fees and charges.
29:20 Factors that Ethan believes will drive costs and improve quality in healthcare, along with transparency.

healthcare,health,patient,provider,payer,transparency,comparedcare,compared care,
|

Episode Support Provided By

Special Thanks to Our 2026 Sustaining Monthly Donors

Kimberly Carleson, Dylan Yahn, Benjamin Light, Matt McQuideAnn Kempski, Spencer Allen, Scott TromanhauserMarilyn Bartlett, 
Steven Elkins, Matthew Bunte, and Lori Smith.

Recent Episodes

EP516: GLP-1s and Cash Pay From the Pharma Manufacturer Point of View, With Ophelia Johnson
Relentless Health ValueJune 17, 202644:0540.35 MB

EP516: GLP-1s and Cash Pay From the Pharma Manufacturer Point of View, With Ophelia Johnson

Listen on Your Favorite App Hello, all you Relentless Tribe members. Welcome to it. Today we have a show that will bend your mind in new directions. And yes, I have a head cold at a very weird time of year. I have trouble apparently doing things like normal people. Anyway, we talk a lot on this podc...

EP515: SNF (Skilled Nursing Facility) Fraud—Or Is It Fraud? With Michelle Cera, PhD
Relentless Health ValueJune 10, 202643:0739.47 MB

EP515: SNF (Skilled Nursing Facility) Fraud—Or Is It Fraud? With Michelle Cera, PhD

Listen on Your Favorite App Hello, all you Relentless Tribe members. Lately, I have been just obsessed with what's hiding in plain sight: the root cause glitches in how American healthcare is built. Not the symptoms now. Not the noise. The actual ground zero. I mean, what we call healthcare in this ...

EP514: Successfully Suing a Health System for Their Anticompetitive Contracts and Also Collecting Damages for Plan Sponsors and Members, With Matt Cantor
Relentless Health ValueJune 03, 2026
514
43:4340.02 MB

EP514: Successfully Suing a Health System for Their Anticompetitive Contracts and Also Collecting Damages for Plan Sponsors and Members, With Matt Cantor

Listen on Your Favorite App Hello, all you Relentless Tribe members. This is the third episode in our legal goings-on trifecta, starting with Doug Aldeen in episode 512 covering what amounts to the main reasons plan sponsors wind up suing their brokers or employee benefit consultants. For a full tra...

EP513: Revisiting Cunning Anticompetitive Hospital Contracts, With Brennan Bilberry

EP513: Revisiting Cunning Anticompetitive Hospital Contracts, With Brennan Bilberry

Listen on Your Favorite App If you are a large employer, union funds broker, fiduciary, or anyone responsible for a health plan that spends half of its dollars on hospital care (which most do), or if you have anything to do with policy or enforcement of policy, yeah … listen this week and next week....

EP512: 3 Kinds of Broker/EBC Rent-Seeking Payment Models—A Lawyer’s Perspective, With Doug Aldeen

EP512: 3 Kinds of Broker/EBC Rent-Seeking Payment Models—A Lawyer’s Perspective, With Doug Aldeen

Listen on Your Favorite App I wanted to talk to a lawyer ’cause, yeah, lawyers are the ones that see stuff that falls the whole way down to the level of legal action. But I wanted to find out what are the main categories of things that wind up in legal land when it comes to broker or EBC (employee b...

EP511: The Tension When Clinical Teams Take On Risk for Policymakers and Others Looking to Rustle Up Future Perverse Incentives, With Dr. Siva and Monica Lypson, MD, MHPE
Relentless Health ValueMay 14, 2026
511
29:3727.1 MB

EP511: The Tension When Clinical Teams Take On Risk for Policymakers and Others Looking to Rustle Up Future Perverse Incentives, With Dr. Siva and Monica Lypson, MD, MHPE

Listen on Your Favorite App Last week, we talked Medicare Advantage with Betsy Seals ( EP510 ), and we talked about finding members who a plan can serve well. This makes sense because Medicare Advantage is a capitated program. In other words, Medicare Advantage plans get paid by CMS a per member per...

EP510: The Impact on You of Medicare Advantage Goings-on (2026 Edition), With Betsy Seals
Relentless Health ValueMay 07, 2026
510
35:3032.5 MB

EP510: The Impact on You of Medicare Advantage Goings-on (2026 Edition), With Betsy Seals

Listen on Your Favorite App I came up with at least one way to tell the difference between making a fair profit and profiteering. If someone makes more money when the patients or members they serve are worse off, yeah, call that profiteering. For a full transcript of this episode, click here . If yo...

Listen and Follow

Sponsored by Aventria Health Group
©2026 BD Bridges LLC. All Rights Reserved.