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Nov
22

Health Payer Intelligence: Deductibles, Out-of-Pocket Healthcare Spending Rose 3% in 2015

By: Vera Gruessner  Healthcare spending within the private health insurance market has grown 4.6 percent in 2015, according to a press release from the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI). This type of growth in spending is higher than in recent years. For instance, healthcare spending in 2014 saw a 2.6 percent rise while 2013 spending increased by 3 percent. The HCCI study, called the 2015 Hea...

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Nov
22

2015 Health Care Cost and Utilization Report

The 2015 Health Care Cost and Utilization Report shows that spending per privately insured averaged $5,141 in 2015, up $226 from the year before. Key Findings  ​Health care spending averaged $5,141 per individual in 2015, up $226 from the year before.Out-of-pocket spending rose 3.0 percent in 2015, to an average of $813 per capita.Spending on prescription drugs grew faster than spending on an...

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Nov
01

Medicare Advantage Health Care Utilization - Hospital Readmissions

 This data brief, reports on five readmission rate measures for the Medicare Advantage (MA) population: 30-day all-cause hospital-wide readmissions and 30-day all-cause readmissions following acute myocardial infarction (AMI), heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and pneumonia. The results show that MA readmission rates have been declining over the past five years. &nb...

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Oct
01

NBER: Why Don't Commercial Health Plans Use Prospective Payment?

ABSTRACT One of the key terms in contracts between hospitals and insurers is how the parties apportion the financial risk of treating unexpectedly costly patients. "Prospective" payment contracts give hospitals a lump-sum amount, depending on the medical condition of the patient, with limited adjustment for the level of services provided. We use data from the Medicare Prospective Payment System an...

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Sep
14

Washington Post: How companies are quietly changing your health plan to make you pay more

 By: Carolyn Johnson While politicians have been embroiled in a fiery debate over President Obama's signature health-care law, a quiet but profound shift is fundamentally reshaping how health insurance works for the roughly 155 million Americans who receive coverage through their employers. A national survey of employer health benefits released Wednesday shows how much deductibles — the healt...

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