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Nov
03

USA TODAY: Woman waited in Atlanta ER for seven hours and wasn't seen. She was later charged $700.

HCCI's research into ER "facility fees" was featured in a USA TODAY article about fees for visiting an emergency room. From the article: "In 2019, the nonprofit Health Care Cost Institute found that the average emergency room visit cost $1,389, up 176% over the decade. This number only includes the cost of entry for emergency care, not include extra charges such as blood tests, IVs, drugs or other...

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Oct
15

Capping Out-of-Pocket Spending on Insulin would Lower Costs for a Substantial Proportion of Commercially Insured Individuals

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...

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Sep
30

NPR: The Bill For His COVID Test In Texas Was A Whopping $54,000

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...

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Sep
08

Health Affairs: Regulating Hospital Prices Based On Market Concentration Is Likely To Leave High-Price Hospitals Unaffected

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 ...

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Aug
17

JAMA Internal Medicine: Association of Surprise-Billing Legislation with Prices Paid to In-Network and Out-of-Network Anesthesiologists in California, Florida, and New York: An Economic Analysis

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...

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