Dive Brief:

• Ralph Weber's Medibid is an online service that allows patients seeking non-emergency care to post their needs and connect with doctors who then compete for the patient's business through a bidding process. 
• Weber describes the service as a "free market alternative to Obamacare" that takes price opacity out of the equation.
• The service is funded through user fees for posting requests and provider fees for entering bids. An estimated 6,000 doctors, surgery centers and hospitals are registered with Medibid, and Weber says that 120,000 people have used the site since its creation four years ago.

Dive Insight:

Medibid's model of functioning like an online auction for medical services is certainly novel—but it comes with inherent risks. As the Washington Post explains, Medibid does not provide robust quality assurance or safety services. Rather, users are only presented with a bidder's medical license number and left to do the due diligence on their own. Many of the surgeries are also performed in outpatient clinical settings that have more lax safety standards than inpatient providers.

But the service's popularity among certain people who lack insurance or have skimpier health plans underscores some of the unmet needs in this market, particularly for non-emergency treatments. That's part of the reason that medical tourism has grown increasingly popular in the United States, with an estimated 1.2 million Americans expected to seek treatment for cosmetic, dental, orthopedic and oncological issues outside the U.S. at cheaper prices in 2014.   

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