Health care cost inflation is waking back up. That's drawing attention to another pricing concern: the fact that care prices can vary dramatically from state to state, city to city and even block to block within the same city. FAIR Health, a health care price data sharing consortium, publishes a monthly indicator that benefits brokers, managers and others can use to get a bird's eye look at pricing variations: the median cost of an in-network birth, by cesarean section, in each state. We used cesarean section births in an effort to filter out some of the cost variation that's due simply to health differences. In theory, if health care providers are using similar methods to decide whether to order a C-section, the patients involved in each state might be facing roughly comparable birthing challenges. Related: Health care price transparency mandates are in effect: What can HR leaders do? The median cost of an in-network C-section in the FAIR Health data is $15,750. At the state level, the median cost ranges from $10,124, in Louisiana, up to $26,876, in one East Coast state known for its high cost of living and personal injury attorney billboards. For a look at the 10 states with the highest median cost for a C-Section, see the gallery above.
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Allison Bell
Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.
