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Sep
19

NPR: The Real Bachelor Party Hangover: A $12,460 ER Bill

HCCI data on ER facility fees was cited in a NPR in a story about a $12,460 ER bill.  From the article: "The Health Care Cost Institute, an independent, nonprofit health research firm, recently analyzed millions of insurance bills to get a better sense of the facility fees that ERs are charging. It found the charges nearly doubled from 2009 to 2016, outpacing overall health spending...

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Sep
17

Bloomberg: Big Hospitals Are Getting Bigger, Pushing U.S. Prices Higher

HCCI's Hospital Concentration Index was featured in a report in Bloomberg.  From the article:  "The report relied on a measure commonly used in antitrust analysis that gauges how concentrated a market is based on the market share of competitors. It measured only the market for inpatient admissions, so it doesn't reflect other services such as outpatient clinic visits or imaging. By ...

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Sep
12

Insulin Use Explains Variation in Level, but not Growth, of Out-of-Pocket Spending on Insulin Products

We previously published two blogs discussing trends in out-of-pocket spending on insulin products. First, we presented data illustrating how average monthly out-of-pocket spending in 2017 varied considerably by month, particularly for individuals enrolled in consumer-directed health plans (CDHPs) that carry higher deductibles. Second, we examined the relationship between increasing point-of-sale p...

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Sep
12

Rising Point-of-Sale Prices for Insulin Correspond with Higher Out-of-Pocket Spending on Insulin in January

Earlier this week we presented data on out-of-pocket spending on insulin during each month in 2017. In that blog, we showed that enrollees in employer-sponsored health insurance paid more out-of-pocket for insulin products at the beginning of the calendar year. We examined the relationship between increasing point-of-sale prices for insulin and higher out-of-pocket spending in January for a subset...

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Sep
10

Out-of-Pocket Spending on Insulin is Highest at the Beginning of the Year

People who get health insurance through their jobs pay more than twice as much for insulin at the beginning of the year than they do at the end of the year, on average. New analysis of HCCI data shows that, nationally, in January 2017, average out-of-pocket spending on insulin was $105. This spending declined every month throughout the calendar year, likely as enrollees met their annual deductible...

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