Saving on medical bills through daily deal sites – smart money or taking a gamble?

I haven’t used a discount, daily deal or coupon site yet (although I see them in a fix-income future) and I’m not sure I’d use them for any sort of medical procedure, but it seems to be getting more common. From Smart Money: Daily deal sites, home of the half-off, limited-time-only, pre-paid coupon craze, are no longer content to sell low-cost dinners and dye jobs. Now on the discount table: laser eye surgery, dental checkups, and other medical services. In the first quarter of 2011, there were more than 2,500 medical, health and dental offers published on daily deal sites in the U.S. — an eight-fold jump over the 300 offered during the same period a year ago, according to Dan Hess, CEO and co-founder of Local Offer Network, a daily deal aggregator. That’s a startling increase, even compared to the rapid growth of the sites themselves, which had a five-fold increase total deal volume over the first quarter. And, says Jack Vonder Heide, president of Technology Briefing Centers, “We’re seeing more of them coming onto the market every week.” [SNIP] But medical organizations say this is the wrong way to sell medical services. Consumers may pay too much attention to the low prices and not enough to the quality of care or the provider’s track record, says Greg Sterling, a San-Francisco-based Internet analyst with Opus Research. And the “limited-time only” nature of daily deal sites doesn’t encourage measured, thoughtful decision making, adds Malcolm Z. Roth, president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. “You shouldn’t be doing procedures on a whim,” he says. Unlike a half-off dinner coupon, where the biggest risk is a wasted meal, the consequences of poorly-performed procedures are more severe, says Carolyn Jacob, an Illinois-based board-certified dermatologist. Any time anyone has an invasive procedure involving needles, there’s a risk of infection, she says. Laser and other skin treatments designed to zap blemishes or hair can burn a patient’s skin; Botox and other chemical lifts can cause lumps or droops, Jacob adds.
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