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Earlier 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 substantial variation within Metro Area...

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a previously unimaginable impact both in the United States and globally. It is increasingly clear as we enter the fifth month of the pandemic, with rising caseloads and deaths, that the United States will need to continue to address the COVID-19 pandemic for the foreseeable future. Each day, we learn more – about the virus clinically, about the people and...

In the start of 2019, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services finalized federal policies that required hospitals to publish the amount they charge for common services, documents commonly referred to as chargemasters. While similar policies have been in place at the state level since the early 2000s, this was the first federal mandate to require this type of transparency. These policies have bee...

Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) represent a significant and growing cost to the United States health care system. While the prevalence and cost of ADRD related to Medicare Fee-for-Service beneficiaries is documented in the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services' Chronic Conditions Warehouse, less is known about the prevalence and cost of ADRD among individuals covered by employ...

Surgery accounts for the largest share of inpatient and outpatient spending among individuals with employer-sponsored insurance, representing 49 percent of inpatient spending and 37 percent of outpatient spending in 2018 according to HCCI's most recent annual report. In recent years, the number of surgical procedures performed using robot assistance has increased dramatically. Intuitive, Inc., whi...

Recent analysis by HCCI finds that enrollment in consumer-directed health plans (CDHPs) increased dramatically since 2008. Nationally, nearly a third of commercially insured individuals were enrolled in a CDHP in 2017, up from 7.5% in 2008. Over ten years, enrollment in CDHPs doubled in 85 of the 88 metro areas studied. High-deductible health plans (HDHPs) have become increasin...

In HCCI's publication in Health Affairs Blog, we examine the cost and utilization of out-of-network care in commercial claims.  From the article:  "People receiving surprise bills, sometimes totaling tens of thousands of dollars, have been frequently chronicled by high-profile media stories and in academic research over the past several years. Previous research from the Health ...

In HCCI's publication in Health Affairs, we examined out-of-network spending in the privately insured population.  Abstract:  "While out-of-network or potential "surprise" billing has garnered increasing attention, particularly in emergency department and inpatient settings, few national studies have examined out-of-network care overall or in other settings. We examined out-of-network sp...

In recent analysis, we document extensive variation across states and metropolitan areas in the frequency of out-of-network visits among individuals with health insurance provided by an employer. These differences raise the question of whether individual providers bill out of network at dissimilar rates. To explore whether a small group of providers are responsible for most out-of-network billing,...

Prenatal care leads to healthier pregnancy, healthier pregnant people, and healthier babies. In fact, birthing parents who receive prenatal care are three times less likely to deliver low birthweight babies, and the baby is five times more likely to survive delivery. To explore the kind of prenatal care pregnant people receive, we looked at utilization of two prototypical prenatal services – labor...

Childbirth 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 care. Childbirth accounts for an estimated fo...

The postpartum period is a vulnerable time for both birthing parent and newborn and is critically important to their health and well-being. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) recommends ongoing, comprehensive care, including physical, social, and psychological services, during the postpartum period. In large part because of an increasing maternal mortalit...

The 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 of care provided in hospitals and how...

The 2018 Health Care Cost and Utilization Report presents data on health care spending, utilization, and average prices from 2014 through 2018 for individuals under the age of 65 who receive health insurance coverage through an employer. The report draws on data from more than 2.5 billion medical and prescription drug claims for approximately 40 million individuals enrolled in employer-sponsored h...

As previous reports have indicated, there is widespread price variation in the U.S. commercial health care system. Many studies have shown that prices are dramatically different not only across geographies, but they vary substantially even within the same market for the same service. For example, we found that prices for the same blood tests could vary 39-fold within Tampa, Florida and the cost of...

% Total Medical Spending % Out-of-Pocket Medical Spending % Medical Charges% Medical  Utilization All Medical Care 11.8 15.6 12.317.2Inpatient Care7.95.68.04.8Outpatient Care13.116.513.717.2 In response to high and growing health care spending, policymakers have proposed improving price transparency as a solution. Several such proposals rely on consumers taking action on publicly av...

The International Federation of Health Plans (iFHP), a CEO network of the global health insurance industry based in London, in partnership with the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) in the United States, and iFHP member companies in eight countries, today published the latest International Comparison of Health Prices Report. The report compares the median prices paid by a sample of private he...

​Using HCCI's data, we assessed the share among individuals younger than 65 years covered by employer-sponsored insurance from 2013 to 2017.  We assessed primary care spending using 2 main definitions: a definition which included the total spending on services rendered by primary care clinicians (broad definition) and one where only CPT codes for specific services specified as prima...

Using data from the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), we examined trends in inpatient hospital admissions and post-acute care (PAC) utilization among Medicare Advantage (MA) and Fee-for-Service (FFS) beneficiaries. Specifically, we compared how frequently individuals in each group were discharged from the hospital, whether they had evidence o...

​The methodology for HCCI's Healthy Marketplace Index was published in a Methods Brief for Health Services Research. Abstract Objective: To compare different methods of indexing health care service prices for the commercially insured population across geographic markets.Data Sources: Health Care Cost Institute commercial claims data from 2012 to 2016.Study Design: We compare price i...

Congress is considering legislation to address "surprise bills", which occur when a person visits an in-network facility, but receives services from a provider that is outside of their insurer's network. Bills in both the House and Senate include provisions to determine a benchmark rate for out-of-network payments based on what in-network providers of the same specialty are paid for delivering sim...

In HCCI's publication in Health Affairs Blog, we examine the case for systemic health system transparency and directing changes towards key stakeholders.  From the article: "Health care costs strain the budgets of families, businesses, and governments, leaving less room for other spending and forcing painful tradeoffs. In 2017, the United States spent $3.5 trillion on health care - ...

Air ambulances are either fixed wing (airplane) or rotary wing (helicopter) aircraft used to transport people in often time-sensitive medical situations. Air ambulances have become a frequent topic in the news due to their high cost and propensity to lead to surprise bills. Our analysis shows that although air ambulances are not frequently used and their use declined over the 2008 to 2017 period, ...

When a person unknowingly receives health care services from a provider that is outside of their insurer's network, it gives rise to the potential for a "surprise bill". Congress continues to consider legislation aimed at reducing the financial burden of "surprise bills" for patients. The approach approved by committees in both the House and Senate is to set a benchmark for the amount that can be ...

Depression is a common mood disorder that affects how people feel, think, and conduct daily activities. Approximately 17 million adults (1 in 14) had at least one major depressive episode in 2017. Surveys have found that antidepressant prescribing has increased over the past two decades. For example, a 2017 National Center for Health Statistics survey found that, among people age 12 and ...