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Instant Insights / Health Care Cost Transparency, Surprise Billing, and the Employee Benefits Industry

Typically, patients, and their employers, don't know the cost of health care or are given inaccurate estimates. Then come the surprise medical bills and costly overruns of employers' benefits budgets. Here's a look at the health care cost transparency problem and how people are trying to solve it.

Analysis

Hospitals charge employers 240% more than Medicare

Prices range from 150 percent of Medicare prices at the low end to 400 percent at the high end.

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Wages Concept Researchers hope the study will give private payors a better grasp of what health care costs are, and allow them to compare prices within a state and across states. (Photo: Shutterstock)

A new study by RAND and the Employers’ Forum of Indiana (EFI) finds that hospital prices are much higher for employer-based health plans than for Medicare.

The study gathered data from hospitals in 25 states, finding a wide variation in what hospitals charged health plans. The researchers looked at claims data for more than 4 million people, with information coming from self-insured employers, state databases and records from participating health insurance plans.

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