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Health Care Costs

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Controlling spending while improving health care access, efficiency, and outcomes is a significant challenge—one that often dominates policy discussions. To help inform decisionmaking, RAND conducts studies that consider all aspects of health care costs, including medical costs, insurance coverage, reimbursement models, and consumer health care expenses.

Research Brief

How Does Telehealth Affect Health Care Quality, Access, Equity, and Costs?

Jul 8, 2021

Early in the pandemic, health care providers pivoted to telehealth out of necessity. But as policymakers begin to look beyond the pandemic, concerns about telehealth's effects on health care spending and quality will arise again.
Research Brief

U.S. Prescription Drug Prices Are 2.5 Times Those in Other Countries

Apr 14, 2021

U.S. prices for prescription drugs were 250 percent of those in 32 comparison countries combined. Brand-name drugs drive the disparity: U.S. prices for this category were 344 percent higher. However, U.S. prices for unbranded generics were lower than those in other countries.

Explore Health Care Costs

Research Brief

Reducing Hospital Spending: Three Policy Options

RAND researchers have estimated the effects of policy options to reduce hospital prices paid by private health plans, outlining design choices and effectiveness levels for each approach.

Apr 21, 2021
Report

Barriers to Price and Quality Transparency in Health Care Markets

RAND researchers gathered information on how health care prices are set, price variation in health care markets, barriers to price and quality transparency for consumers, and the extent to which price and quality information is used in marketing.

Apr 19, 2021
Journal Article

Evaluation of an Intervention to Reduce Low-Value Preoperative Care for Patients Undergoing Cataract Surgery at a Safety-Net Health System

To evaluate a multipronged intervention to reduce low-value preoperative care for patients undergoing cataract surgery and analyze costs from various fiscal perspectives.

Apr 9, 2021
Journal Article

Cost Evaluation of Integrating Local HIV and Housing Data to Facilitate Service Coordination in Four Demonstration Sites

As part of the evaluation of a federal initiative to integrate HIV medical and housing data at four local jurisdictions in the U.S., we estimated the financial costs of implementing data integration occurring from June 2016 to August 2018.

Mar 12, 2021
Commentary

ACA Subsidies for Higher-Income Families Are Key to Enrolling More Americans

The House Ways and Means Committee has proposed several insurance reforms in its emergency COVID-19 relief package, including increasing subsidizes and extending subsidies to people with higher incomes. The proposed combined approach is a far more efficient means of covering uninsured Americans than enhancing subsidies only for those who are currently eligible.

Mar 1, 2021
News Release

Bundled Payments for Surgical Procedures With Copay Waivers Creates Substantial Cost Savings

Providing patients discounts for using medical providers that agree to charge one set price for expensive procedures such as knee replacement surgery can result in savings for both patients and payers.

Mar 1, 2021
Research Brief

10Plan, How Would It Affect Health Care Spending by Consumers and the Federal Government

The 10Plan is a self-pay plan for individuals currently uninsured or covered by a private nongroup health insurance plan. The authors built a microsimulation model to estimate health care spending under both the status quo and the 10Plan.

Feb 25, 2021
Report

Measures and Methodology for International Comparisons of Health Care System Performance: Final Report

RAND researchers worked with 15 experts in quality measurement, clinical care, and health economics to generate potential measure constructs that could improve the U.S. ability to learn from international comparisons of health system performance.

Feb 24, 2021
Research Brief

Private U.S. Health Plans Pay Hospitals 247 Percent of What Medicare Would Pay

RAND researchers used data from 49 states and Washington, D.C., to assess hospital prices paid by private health plans. Data sources included $33.8 billion in spending from 3,112 community hospitals—more than half of community hospitals nationwide.

Feb 24, 2021
Blog

Reducing Hospital Prices, Vaccinating the Most Active, Myanmar: RAND Weekly Recap

This weekly recap focuses on regulating hospital prices to cut spending, a COVID-19 vaccine strategy that prioritizes “active” people, what the Capitol attack means for security clearances, and more.

Feb 19, 2021
News Release

Setting Hospital Prices Can Achieve Greater Savings Than Increasing Competition or Price Transparency

Among strategies to curb hospital prices among the commercially insured population in the United States, direct price regulations such as setting rates are likely to achieve greater savings than other approaches like increasing competition or improving price transparency.

Feb 18, 2021
Journal Article

Trends in Low-Value Health Service Use and Spending in the US Medicare Fee-for-Service Program, 2014–2018

Among individuals with fee-for-service Medicare receiving any of 32 measured services, low-value care use and spending decreased marginally from 2014 to 2018.

Feb 18, 2021
Report

Setting U.S. Hospital Prices Could Cut Overall Health Spending by Billions

Price regulations face political obstacles and have been strongly opposed by medical providers. But setting prices for all commercial health care payers could reduce hospital spending by $61.9 billion to $236.6 billion a year if the rates were set at 100 to 150 percent of the amounts paid by Medicare.

Feb 18, 2021
News Release

Low-Value Care Among Medicare Recipients Drops Only Marginally Despite Effort to Curb Practices

Examples of low-value health care include prescribing opioids for acute back pain and antibiotics for upper respiratory infections. Despite efforts to better educate clinicians and discourage wasteful care, spending on such services among Medicare recipients dropped only marginally from 2014 to 2018.

Feb 16, 2021
Report

Increasing Price Transparency in Health Care: Key Themes and Policy Options from a Technical Expert Panel

RAND researchers examine current price transparency efforts and their features, describe barriers to more widespread availability and use of price information, and discuss possible ways to overcome those barriers.

Feb 16, 2021
Journal Article

Impact of Consumer-Directed Health Plans on Low-Value Healthcare

Switching to a consumer-directed health plan is associated with reduced overall outpatient spending, but not with reduced spending on low-value healthcare services.

Feb 12, 2021
Journal Article

Effects of Employer-Offered High-Deductible Plans on Low-Value Spending in the Privately Insured Population

This study uses insurance claims data and changes in plan offerings within firms over time to estimate treatment effects of high-deductible plans on spending on 24 low-value services received in the outpatient setting.

Feb 12, 2021
Report

Using Claims-Based Estimates of Post-Operative Visits to Revalue Procedures with 10- and 90-Day Global Periods

This report describes how CMS could use new claims-based data on post-operative visits to adjust the valuations of surgical procedures with 10- and 90-day global periods.

Feb 5, 2021
Report

Claims-Based Reporting of Post-Operative Visits for Procedures with 10- or 90-Day Global Periods: Final Report

The authors of this report summarize patterns of post-operative visits where Medicare bundles payment for post-operative care into payment for surgical procedures. The results suggest fewer visits occur than Medicare assumes in its payment rates.

Feb 5, 2021

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RAND Topic:
Health Care Costs

Topic Synonyms:
Healthcare Costs;
Medical Costs

Research conducted by

RAND Health Care