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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.

News Release

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

Mar 1, 2021

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.
Report

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

Feb 18, 2021

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.

Explore Health Care Costs

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
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

Responses to Comments on RAND Global Services Reports

RAND researchers respond to comments on three earlier reports related to post-operative visits bundled into Medicare payments for many procedures.

Feb 5, 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
News Release

Prescription Drug Prices in the United States Are 2.56 Times Those in Other Countries

Prescription drug prices in the United States are significantly higher than in other nations, with prices in the United States averaging 2.56 times those seen in 32 other nations.

Jan 28, 2021
Report

U.S. Prescription Drug Prices Are 2.56 Times Those in Other Countries

Prices for prescription drugs in the United States in 2018 were 256 percent of those in 32 comparison countries. For brand-name drugs, U.S. prices were 344 percent higher. But for generic drugs, they were only 84 percent of the average paid in other nations.

Jan 28, 2021
Journal Article

Do Supply-Side Forces Explain Geographic Variation in Health Care Use?

We provide new evidence on causal factors behind geographic variation in health care utilization by examining changes in health care use for the near-elderly as they transition from being uninsured into Medicare.

Jan 26, 2021
Report

The 10Plan: An Alternative Approach to Health Care Financing

The 10Plan would require individuals to pay a copayment for each encounter but no premiums up front. They'd have Medicare rates, and could pay cash or borrow from the government at a low interest rate to pay for services. How would health care spending and federal costs change under the plan?

Jan 25, 2021
Report

Balancing Access and Cost Control in the TRICARE Prescription Drug Benefit

The Military Health System provides health and drug coverage to beneficiaries through TRICARE. This report describes the TRICARE pharmacy benefit and the trade-offs in TRICARE pharmacy policies between increasing access and controlling costs.

Jan 14, 2021
Blog

A Message from Our President, Medical Mistrust, Insulin Prices: RAND Weekly Recap

This weekly recap focuses on Wednesday’s siege on the U.S. Capitol, Americans' psychological distress, medical mistrust and COVID-19 vaccines, and more.

Jan 8, 2021
Journal Article

The Perils Of PECOS: Using Medicare Administrative Data To Answer Important Policy Questions About Health Care Markets

We don’t know as much as we should about health systems, and our efforts are hampered by seriously flawed data.

Jan 8, 2021
Essay

The Astronomical Price of Insulin Hurts American Families

More than 30 million Americans have diabetes, and nearly a quarter of them use insulin to manage their symptoms and prevent life-threatening complications. The price they have to pay for insulin is more than ten times higher than the average prices in 32 other countries combined.

Jan 6, 2021
Periodical

RAND Review: January-February 2021

The cover story on the ’Internet of Bodies’ highlights the perils of devices that track personal health data and provide medical treatment. Other columns explore vaccine hesitancy, the high price of insulin in the U.S., and social justice in America.

Jan 6, 2021
Journal Article

End-of-Life Cost Trajectories in Cancer Patients Treated by Medicare Versus the Veterans Health Administration

To evaluate differences in end-of-life cost trajectories for cancer patients treated through Medicare versus by the Veterans Health Administration (VA).

Dec 30, 2020

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RAND Topic:
Health Care Costs

Topic Synonyms:
Healthcare Costs;
Medical Costs

Research conducted by

RAND Health Care