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...
HCCI data was recently cited in a Kaiser Health News story on IUD billing. From the article: "In all likelihood, most women probably won't get a bill for IUD insertion or a birth control prescription. Data compiled by the Health Care Cost Institute, an independent research group funded by insurers, suggested that in 2017 fewer than 5% of women had an out-of-pocket bill for the insertio...
HCCI research on the potential effects of price transparency on price variation was cited in a recent Washington Post article. "There is more wiggle room on the high side — it could make up for price increases on the lower side," said Kevin Kennedy, one of the study researchers. The Health 202: Health-care costs might decline if hospitals are forced by the Trump administration to disclose the...
On November 27, 2019 CMS proposed a rule (CMS-9915-P) requiring group health plans and health insurance issuers in the individual and group markets to disclose cost-sharing information to enrollees, including an estimates of an enrollee's cost-sharing liability for covered items or services furnished by a particular provider. As also noted in our comments on rule CMS-1717-P, HC...
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...
