Prices
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Effects of COVID-19 on Health Care Spending Were Concentrated in April-May 2020
Read more: Effects of COVID-19 on Health Care Spending Were Concentrated in April-May 2020The COVID-19 pandemic shaped health care spending and use over the past two years in numerous ways. We recently released our Health Care Cost and Utilization Report which provides data from the first year of the pandemic on health care use, spending, and prices across different types of services for approximately 55 million individuals enrolled…
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The Price of Childbirth in the U.S. Tops $13,000 in 2020
Read more: The Price of Childbirth in the U.S. Tops $13,000 in 2020As HCCI has previously documented, the price of childbirth in the U.S. is higher than in many other countries. When prices are high, patients with health insurance pay directly through coinsurance (i.e., cost-sharing calculated as a percent of what their insurer pays for the service) and over time, as higher prices charged to insurers are…
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Birthing People in the U.S. Pay Nearly $2,000 Out-of-Pocket to Have a Baby
Read more: Birthing People in the U.S. Pay Nearly $2,000 Out-of-Pocket to Have a BabyThe birth of a child is momentous for any person and family. New parents may face a range of challenges, including a lack of paid family leave, the rising costs of childcare, and potential health-related complications for the birthing person and new baby. In the midst of this major life transition, parents also face new…
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2019 Health Care Cost and Utilization Report
Read more: 2019 Health Care Cost and Utilization ReportThe 2019 Health Care Cost and Utilization Report presents data on health care spending, utilization, and average prices from 2015 through 2019 for individuals under the age of 65 who receive health insurance coverage through an employer. This report examines trends within four categories of service: inpatient admissions, outpatient visits and procedures, professional services, and prescription drugs. All data…
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Past the Healthy Marketplace Index, Volume II: Exploring Changes in Actual Prices Paid for Specific Services by Metro Area from 2013 to 2017
Read more: Past the Healthy Marketplace Index, Volume II: Exploring Changes in Actual Prices Paid for Specific Services by Metro Area from 2013 to 2017In the first brief of the Past the Healthy Marketplace Index series, we explored how prices compared across the country and found that, in 2017, health care prices for specific services varied by as much as 22-fold across metro areas and even up 40-fold within them. In this next brief, we looked at variation in…
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Past the Healthy Marketplace Index, Volume I: Exploring Actual Prices Paid for Specific Services by Metro Area
Read more: Past the Healthy Marketplace Index, Volume I: Exploring Actual Prices Paid for Specific Services by Metro AreaHow much people spend on health care from place to place reflects multiple, interwoven, and dynamic factors, such as the cost and use of services. Health care spending and its driving factors change over time, differ across geographies, and vary by type of service. The Health Care Cost Institute’s (HCCI) Healthy Marketplace Index (HMI) provides…
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Comparing Commercial and Medicare Professional Service Prices
Read more: Comparing Commercial and Medicare Professional Service PricesPeople in the United States routinely cite health care and health care costs as top concerns.1,2,3,4 For the more than 160 million people who get insurance from their employer, the cost of health care is high, growing, and outpacing growth in wages.5,6,7 Across the country, health care costs show up in the form of higher premiums and…
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Commercial Prices Relative to Medicare Vary Within Metro Areas Across Specialties and by Type of Service
Read more: Commercial Prices Relative to Medicare Vary Within Metro Areas Across Specialties and by Type of ServiceEarlier HCCI research found that at the national level, commercial payers paid prices that were, on average, 122% of Medicare. However, we found that commercial professional service prices varied dramatically across states from 98% of Medicare in Alabama to 188% of Medicare in Wisconsin. There was similar variation within states, such as California, and also…
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Understanding Variation in Spending on Childbirth Among the Commercially Insured
Read more: Understanding Variation in Spending on Childbirth Among the Commercially InsuredChildbirth is the most frequent reason for an inpatient admission in the United States, and Cesarean-section (C-section) is the most common operating room procedure in an inpatient hospital stay. Among people who get insurance through an employer, the combination of labor, delivery, and newborn care makes up nearly one in six dollars spent on inpatient…
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Compared to What? Baseline Understanding of the Distribution of Hospital Care
Read more: Compared to What? Baseline Understanding of the Distribution of Hospital CareThe pandemic of a new coronavirus, COVID-19, is increasing demand on hospitals as unprecedented numbers of people with respiratory disease seek treatment. In addition to straining hospital resources directly related to care of COVID-19, the outbreak may also displace other types of care. In this analysis, we hope to inform the understanding of the distribution…