All HCCI Reports
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California Health Care Service Spending, Price, and Affordability Variation by County
Read more: California Health Care Service Spending, Price, and Affordability Variation by CountyIntroduction Previous research from the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) has consistently found that growth in private-sector health care spending is primarily driven by prices. For example, HCCI’s most recent Health Care Cost and Utilization report on employer-sponsored insurance found a 17% increase in per-person spending in California from 2018-2022. In that five-year period, prices…
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Use of Medications for Opioid Use Disorder Grew from 2018 to 2022, but Remained Low
Read more: Use of Medications for Opioid Use Disorder Grew from 2018 to 2022, but Remained LowKey Takeaways: Nearly one-third of Americans report having a family member who is, or has been, addicted to opioids. While opioid overdose deaths have fallen from their peak in 2022, they are still the most common type of drug overdose death, claiming more than 54,000 lives in 2024. Medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) are…
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Most Spending on Imaging Services Went to CT Scans, X-Rays, and Ultrasounds
Read more: Most Spending on Imaging Services Went to CT Scans, X-Rays, and UltrasoundsImaging services are capturing policy attention because they are central to a wide range of health care services – a critical part of how medical issues are diagnosed and monitored. At the same time, they make up an increasing proportion of outpatient spending and often have higher prices when provided in a hospital outpatient department than in a physician’s office…
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Inpatient Hospital Prices are Highest Where Hospital Competition is Lowest
Read more: Inpatient Hospital Prices are Highest Where Hospital Competition is LowestConventional wisdom and economic theory suggest that more competition means lower prices. In health care, there is longstanding evidence that geographic areas with less competition among hospitals are associated with higher negotiated commercial prices. Regulators and researchers use the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) to measure market concentration at a geographic area. HHI can range from 0 (competitive market) to 10,000 (monopoly market). Hospital markets that are considered “highly concentrated,” (HHI greater than…
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Leveraging Transparency in Coverage (TiC) Data for Health Care Price Analysis
Read more: Leveraging Transparency in Coverage (TiC) Data for Health Care Price AnalysisThe Transparency in Coverage (TiC) regulations have introduced unprecedented visibility into negotiated health care prices in the United States. By requiring insurers to publish machine-readable files containing payer–provider contracted rates starting in 2022, the policy has created a new data source for studying price variation. However, the scale, inconsistency, and missing information within the TiC…
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Transparency Data Highlight Wide Variation in the Price of Childbirth
Read more: Transparency Data Highlight Wide Variation in the Price of ChildbirthChildbirth is the most common reason for an inpatient hospital admission among people with employer-sponsored insurance. Despite how routine it is, the price of giving birth can vary widely depending on where you live, which hospital you use, and which insurer you have. Using Transparency in Coverage (TiC) data, we set out to better understand…
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High Medicare Spending on Skin Substitutes Is the Result of Higher Prices, More Patients, and More Products
Read more: High Medicare Spending on Skin Substitutes Is the Result of Higher Prices, More Patients, and More ProductsSkin substitutes have gained attention recently for the rapid growth in Medicare Part B spending. Used to replace or regenerate damaged skin, skin substitutes are bioengineered materials or tissue products that mimic the structure and function of healthy skin and can serve as a permanent or temporary solution to conditions like diabetic foot ulcers or burns. …
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Effects of Vertical Integration on Providers’ Billing and Practice Patterns in ESI (2018-2022)
Read more: Effects of Vertical Integration on Providers’ Billing and Practice Patterns in ESI (2018-2022)In this report, we study changes in billing and practice patterns following providers’ acquisition by health systems, from 2018 to 2022, using HCCI’s unique dataset of people with employer-sponsored insurance. First, we looked at Evaluation and Management (E&M) visits to see if providers that had been acquired billed higher intensity visits following acquisition, which could…
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Keytruda: How Expanding Use and Site-of-Service Prices Made Keytruda the Top Spending Administered Drug
Read more: Keytruda: How Expanding Use and Site-of-Service Prices Made Keytruda the Top Spending Administered DrugIn 2021, Keytruda (pembrolizumab) became the highest-spending clinician-administered drug among the commercially insured population (people under age 65 covered through employer-sponsored insurance). Keytruda is an immune checkpoint inhibitor (anti–PD-1 monoclonal antibody) administered by infusion and used across a growing number of cancers, often in combination with chemotherapy or other agents and in both metastatic and…
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Health Cost Landscape Highlights How Health Care Spending and Income Shape Cost Burden and Affordability
Read more: Health Cost Landscape Highlights How Health Care Spending and Income Shape Cost Burden and AffordabilityThe Health Cost Landscape is an interactive tool created by the Health Care Cost Institute that uses data from employer-sponsored insurance plans to compare health care spending, prices, use, and service mix across 269 metro areas and 45 states. The Landscape tool shows that health care spending varies widely across the United States, ranging from…