Annual Reports
HCCI’s Health Care Cost and Utilization Reports

Previous HCCI analysis documented rapid growth in insulin spending over the 2012-17 period. High out-of-pocket spending may deter adherence to insulin among individuals with diabetes, with potentially fatal effects. In this blog, we update our analysis of out-of-pocket insulin spending to 2019 using HCCI's unique commercial claims dataset, which includes prescription drug claims for 29 millio...

HCCI's President and CEO Niall Brennan was quoted in an NPR report on a shockingly high bill for a COVID-19 test. From the article: ' "People are going to charge what they think they can get away with," says Niall Brennan, president and CEO of the Health Care Cost Institute, a nonprofit that studies health care prices. "Even a perfectly well-intentioned provision like this can be hijacke...

Abstract Concern about high hospital prices for commercially insured patients has motivated several proposals to regulate these prices. Such proposals often limit regulations to highly concentrated hospital markets. Using a large sample of 2017 US commercial insurance claims, we demonstrate that under the market definition commonly used in these proposals, most high-price hospitals are in markets ...

Question  What is the association of state surprise-billing legislation with prices paid to anesthesiologists in hospital outpatient departments and ambulatory surgery centers? Findings  This retrospective economic analysis of more than 2.5 million claims filed for patients with private health insurance who received anesthesia services in hospital outpatient departments and ambulatory su...

Question Are there differences in insurer spending and care utilization for patients with private insurance undergoing cancer surgery at National Cancer Institute (NCI) centers vs community hospitals? Findings In this cross-sectional study of 66 878 patients with breast, colon, or lung cancer, surgery at NCI centers, compared with community hospitals, was associated with higher insurer prices paid...