Jeanne Pinder

Founder & CEO - ClearHealthCosts

Jeanne Pinder is founder and CEO of ClearHealthCosts, a journalism startup in New York City that is bringing transparency to the health care marketplace by telling people what things cost.

Did you know that a simple MRI could cost $300 or $6,200 in the same metro area? Or that a common blood test could cost $19 or $522? Did you know that you might well pay less if you put away your insurance card and instead pay cash?

ClearHealthCosts has partnered with big media organizations and others to report on and crowdsource health prices, with funding from angel investors, and with grants from the Knight Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York, and others.

Partners include The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Daily News and philly.com; 6ABC Action News television in Philadelphia; NOLA.com I The Times-Picayune and WVUE Fox 8 Live in New Orleans; WLRN public radio in Miami; WUSF public radio in Tampa-St. Petersburg; KQED public radio in San Francisco; KPCC public radio in Los Angeles; WNYC public radio in New York; and MedPage Today, providing news and opinion to 670,000 providers.

Pinder worked at The New York Times as an editor, reporter and human resources executive for nearly 25 years. She took a buyout in 2009, and a year later won a shark-tank type pitch contest to found ClearHealthCosts.

She speaks fluent Russian and used to live in the Soviet Union, a place almost as opaque as the health care marketplace.