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.
The purchase of medical goods and services by employer health plans resembles no other business transaction in American commerce.
Prices range from 150 percent of Medicare prices at the low end to 400 percent at the high end.
The mammoth piece of legislation would target nearly every area of the health care industry for reform, including prescription drugs, transparency and health information.
While the renewed focus on the potential for cost transparency to transform the patient experience is exciting, we hope it will stay grounded in just how difficult it is to execute on this vision.
Consumers often don't know how much variation there is in health care services between providers, and it's costing them.
According to consumers, health systems are coming up short on digital access, price transparency and affordability of care.
Lawmakers are now trying to close gaps in the state's surprise billing law and limit how much hospitals can charge for out-of-network emergency care.
H.R. 861, would require any hospital seeking to participate in Medicare to provide any out-of-network insured patients with detailed cost notices.
Hospitals are now required to post their chargemaster prices online, but the information is confusing and often unintelligible.
Florida residents see the greatest number of surprise bills, while Minnesota sees the least.
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