Publications
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Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance Plays a Significant Role in Vulnerable and Rural Communities
Read more: Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance Plays a Significant Role in Vulnerable and Rural CommunitiesHealth care insurance claims data capture what health care services people use and how much they pay. These data are crucial for understanding the state of the U.S. health care system, including aspects that function well, those that need improvement, and how to achieve better health and access to care across populations. In this report,…
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International comparisons of health care prices from the 2019 iFHP study
Read more: International comparisons of health care prices from the 2019 iFHP studyThe International Federation of Health Plans (iFHP), an executive 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 multiple countries, today published the latest International Health Cost Comparison Report. The report compares the median prices paid…
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ARM and ASHEcon 2022 Recap: HCCI Staff Research
Read more: ARM and ASHEcon 2022 Recap: HCCI Staff ResearchWe’ll admit it: we have missed in-person conferences! In June, HCCI staff attended AcademyHealth’s Annual Research Meeting (ARM) and ASHEcon. In addition to connecting with other health services researchers, staff presented original research using HCCI’s commercial claims dataset. Here’s a sampling of HCCI staff presentations: ASHEcon: Real World Consequences of the Qualifying Payment Amount in the No Surprises Act Presentation…
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The First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic Had a Disproportionate Impact on Inpatient Service Use in Socially Vulnerable Metro Areas
Read more: The First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic Had a Disproportionate Impact on Inpatient Service Use in Socially Vulnerable Metro AreasEach year, HCCI publishes an annual update to the Healthy Marketplace Index (HMI), an interactive tool that describes how health care prices, use, and spending vary across metropolitan areas. HMI helps us to understand how these aspects of the health care system compare and contrast to the median metropolitan area. We recently released the latest…
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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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The Insanity of U.S. Health Care Pricing: An Early Look at Hospital Price Transparency Data
Read more: The Insanity of U.S. Health Care Pricing: An Early Look at Hospital Price Transparency DataThe numbers in this report have been updated to reflect the most recent pricing data made available by Sutter Health. While nearly all of the prices remained unchanged (93%), some, generally higher cost services were revised downward by Sutter. For example, in the initial report we found that C-section prices ranged from $7,634 to $89,244…
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When the Medicare Rate Isn’t the Medicare Rate: Analyzing Differences Between the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule and Payments Received by Physicians.
Read more: When the Medicare Rate Isn’t the Medicare Rate: Analyzing Differences Between the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule and Payments Received by Physicians.Increasingly, policymakers are considering proposals that tie payments made by private health insurers, in some way, to rates paid by Medicare. These proposals are inspired by the rising cost of health care and widespread variation in health care prices. For example, we recently found that the cost of the same service can vary by 5-fold,…
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Charge Amounts for Professional Procedures to Commercial Insurance and Traditional Medicare
Read more: Charge Amounts for Professional Procedures to Commercial Insurance and Traditional MedicareIn 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…
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Consumer-Directed Health Plan Enrollment Rises in All Cities over 10 Years (2008 to 2017)
Tags: 10 Year Trend, Commercially Insured, Consumer-Directed Health Plans, Geographic Variation, Out-of-Pocket, Spending
Read more: Consumer-Directed Health Plan Enrollment Rises in All Cities over 10 Years (2008 to 2017)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 increasingly common…
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How often do providers bill out of network?
Read more: How often do providers bill out of network?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…