Consumer Driven Health Care

Many insurers are offering smaller networks of doctors and hospitals, and problems arise when patients cannot find local in-network providers and must pay more for out-of-network care or travel farther for in-network care.

About half of all patients are getting hit with facility fees, which are billed for doctor visits at hospital-owned clinics, as three in four physicians are now employed by hospitals, health systems or other corporate entities.

The limits stem from an opioid settlement with AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson that flag and sometimes block controlled substances – and patients with anxiety and sleep disorder are caught in the crosshairs.

"Clear employment law trends for 2023 have emerged. Some of the more significant trends reflect the country's social and political atmosphere," the authors of the study wrote.

Nearly every U.S. hospital shared data with third-party trackers in 2021 and "some significant portion of these are including protected health information," according to a new Health Affairs study.

Premiums are greatly affected by the number of insurers competing in the rating region: the more insurers, the lower the benchmark premiums, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation report.