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By: Maria Castellucci  The best solutions to decrease the high costs of healthcare services may not be solved at the federal level but in states and their communities, a new study suggests. The report, published by researchers this week at the Health Care Cost Institute, found costs of services vary dramatically depending on a patient's zip code. For example, patients in El Paso, Texas, paid ...

By: Maggie Fox  Why does a knee replacement cost $29,000 in Kansas but $40,000 in next-door Colorado? Health care prices are all over the map in the U.S., a new study finds. It digs deeply into the crazy pattern of health costs across the U.S. and shows there is very little consistency. The report from the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) finds prices for the same procedures vary by som...

ABSTRACT: Prices for hospital admissions have received considerable attention in recent years, both because they are an important component of health care spending and because they can vary widely. In this paper, we use 2013 claims data from three large insurers to examine the hospital payment rates of those insurers in their commercial plans and their Medicare Advantage plans and compare them wit...

ABSTRACT: We compare healthcare spending in public and private Medicare using newly available claims data from Medicare Advantage (MA) insurers. MA insurer revenues are 30 percent higher than their healthcare spending. Healthcare spending is 25 percent lower for MA enrollees than for enrollees in traditional Medicare (TM) in the same county with the same risk score. Spending differences between MA...

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...

Children's Health Spending: 2010-2014 examines spending on health care for children covered by employer-sponsored insurance from 2010 to 2014. For the first time, HCCI analyzed children's health care spending trends at the state level, reporting on Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin, as well as the District of Columbia.   Download Report Ap...

By: Kelly Gooch  Commercially insured Americans in some states pay more than twice what their counterparts in other states pay for healthcare, according to a study from the Health Care Cost Institute. The study, published in Health Affairs, is accompanied by HCCI's National Chartbook of Health Care Prices—2015, which highlights differences in prices for more than 240 common medical services i...

 By: Jayne O'Donnell Huge variations exist in the prices of some of the most common medical procedures across state lines, by according to a report major insurers released Wednesday, but some experts say the data is of little use to consumers who rarely know what they owe until the bills arrive. The insurer-funded Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) won't disclose which hospitals or doctors are...

By: Bob Herman Price and utilization are the two essential elements of the nation's health spending tab, and seemingly wild differences in prices for common medical procedures appear to be driving that bill up a lot. One of the most comprehensive, independent studies of commercial healthcare prices shows that employers and insurers that provide private health coverage can pay a lot more for servic...

By: Sarah Kliff  How much you pay for health care often depends on one key fact: where you live. A new study of more than 1 billion medical bills makes this fact abundantly clear. It shows huge variation in the price of basic medical procedures like ultrasounds, annual physicals, or cataract removals. Consider this: An ultrasound for pregnancy costs an average of $183 in Canton, Ohio. But dri...

By: Alison Kodjak  Need knee replacement surgery? It may be worthwhile to head for Tucson. That's because the average price for a knee replacement in the Arizona city is $21,976, about $38,000 less than it would in Sacramento, Calif. That's according to a report issued Wednesday by the Health Care Cost Institute. The report, called the National Chartbook on Health Care Prices, uses claims and...

The National Chartbook of Health Care Prices – 2015 and accompanying Health Affairs article "Prices For Common Medical Services Vary Substantially Among the Commercially Insured" illuminates differences in price for over 240 common medical services in 41 states and the District of Columbia. Download Report   Download PDF File Here Among the commercially insured, wide variation in prices have ...

This data brief compares average state-level prices against quality measures for asthma, diabetes and hypertension care and finds that higher prices for medical services are not always indicative of higher quality of care.    Download PDF File Here

Download Report The Healthy Marketplace Index is a series of metrics that measure the economic performance of health care markets across the country. The HMI was developed with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.    Download PDF File Here The Healthy Marketplace Index Report (HMI) shows the economic performance of more than 40 health care markets across the country. Dev...

 This data brief discusses patterns in the price and utilization indices reported in the 2015 Healthy Marketplace Index Report.   Download PDF File Here

This data brief looks at per capita out-of-pocket spending rates nationally and statewide and examines average differences in consumer prices for a set of five common medical procedures: office visit for the evaluation of a new patient, colonoscopy, cataract removal, lower leg MRI; and ultrasound for pregnancy nationally and in nine states: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey...

The 2007-2011 Vermont Health Care Cost and Utilization Report compares national and Vermont health care trends for the privately insured. The report finds that Vermonters with employer sponsored health insurance spent less on health care, but their spending grew faster than the national average. The report was prepared in cooperation with the Green Mountain Care Board. Download Repo...

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The 2012 Health Care Cost and Utilization Report shows that the growth rate of health care spending among privately insured people under age 65 remained low in 2012, growing 4.0 percent, slightly lower than in 2011 (4.1%).   Download Report Appendix Tables Key Findings ​Spending grew fastest for young adults, women, and people living in the Northeast.Out-of-pocket spending rose more quickly t...