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Healthcare Costs for 7 Primary Care Consumer Markets

4 Responses

1. Hope Hetico RN MHA, on December 19, 2015 at 3:49 PM said:

   The Experts Were Wrong About the Best Places for Better and Cheaper Health Care

   Do areas that spend less on Medicare also spend less on health care over all?

   Well, a new study is forcing experts to rethink what they know about health costs.

   Hope Hetico RN MHA

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2. Abu, on April 13, 2017 at 6:42 PM said:

   7.1 Million Marketplace Enrollees Are Receiving Cost-Sharing Reductions

   Kaiser Family Foundation recently released an analysis of federal cost-sharing subsidies for ACA marketplace plans. Here are some key findings:

   • 12.2 million people selected a 2017 ACA marketplace plan.
   • 7.1 million 2017 enrollees are receiving cost-sharing reductions.
   • Subsidies lower medical and prescription deductibles by as much as $3,354.
   • Subsidies reduce annual out-of-pocket maximums by up to $5,587.
   • Average silver premiums would need to increase by 19% without federal subsidies.
   • Premium changes range from 9% in North Dakota to 27% in Mississippi.

   Source: Kaiser Family Foundation, April 6, 2017

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3. Hope Hetico RN MHA, on August 22, 2017 at 7:16 PM said:

   13% of Adults Tried to Predict Their Healthcare Expenses Last Year

   Kaiser Health News recently published an article on consumer attitudes toward price shopping. Here are some key findings:

   • 13% of adults who paid for healthcare last year tried to predict their expenses.
   • 3 in 4 participants said they did not know of any cost comparison resource.
   • 3% compared prices from multiple providers ahead of time.
   • 71% said that out-of-pocket spending was important when choosing a doctor.
   • More than 90% said they believed that prices vary greatly among providers.
   • Half said that if a cost comparison website were available, they would use it.

   Source: Kaiser Health News, August 18, 2017

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4. Editor, on February 21, 2018 at 8:50 PM said:

   EHRs Do Not Lower Administrative Billing Costs: Study

   Electronic health records were supposed to lower administrative costs, but they may not be getting the job done, according to a new study published this week in JAMA. Administrative costs made up as much as a quarter of professional revenue for some patient encounters, according to the study, which focused on a single academic medical center. Researchers attribute much of the high cost to varying contracts between the hospital and health plans and payer as well as varying price schedules.

   “After investing more than $30 billion in health IT, we haven’t improved the administrative efficiency,” said Dr. Kevin Schulman, one of the study authors and the associate director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute. “That was one of the big promises of digitizing records.” The researchers could not attribute the high costs to “any significantly wasteful or inefficient efforts” in billing, something they speculate could be due to the fact that the health system uses a single billing organization. Instead, they attribute the costs to differing contracts with payers and price schedules that remain unstandardized.

   Source: Rachel Z. Arndt, Modern Healthcare [2/20/18]

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