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

Report: Health care price variation costs $18 billion a year

Consumers often don't know how much variation there is in health care services between providers, and it's costing them.

By Scott Wooldridge | May 30, 2019 at 11:11 AM

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U.S. consumers could save more than $18 billion a year if providers stopped overpricing their diagnostic and testing services, according to a new report from UnitedHealth Group (UHG). The insurance giant said it found prices can vary significantly for common tests such as MRI scans and echocardiograms.

“This price variation leads to gross overspending for many consumers, even for common health care services such as diagnostic tests, which play an important role in the diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment of disease,” the report said.

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