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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

Commentary

A Health Care Entitlement Worth Ending

The health care “entitlement” we need to reform is the notion that America's health care system is entitled to an ever-growing share of America's wealth, writes Arthur Kellermann.

Feb 27, 2013
Commentary

The Delayed Promise of Health-Care IT

Globally, the health IT industry should not wait to be forced by government regulators into doing a better job. Developers can boost the pace of adoption by creating more standardized systems that are easier to use, truly interoperable, and afford patients greater access to and control over their personal health data.

Feb 26, 2013
Testimony

Efforts to Reform Physician Payment by Tying Payment to Performance

Public and private sector purchasers are actively working to design value-based payment programs to achieve the goals of improved quality and more efficient use of health care resources. How these programs are designed is a complex undertaking and one that will determine the likelihood of their success.

Feb 14, 2013
Commentary

Do You Get What You Pay For? Maybe Not in Health Care

While the current state of the evidence does not provide clear guidance to policymakers seeking to address the twin pillars of health care quality and cost, it is apparent that researchers must produce more detailed data on how to reduce health care spending while improving quality, writes Peter Hussey.

Feb 12, 2013
Blog

Are You a 'Wise' Health Care Consumer?

To be wise purchasers of health care services, consumers need access to accurate and understandable information about health plans and providers. They wrongly assume that more expensive providers are better than less expensive ones, despite inconsistent evidence that there is any link between health care cost and quality.

Feb 5, 2013
Journal Article

Spending and Mortality in US Acute Care Hospitals

Greater hospital spending is associated with lower risk-adjusted inpatient mortality for major medical conditions in the United States.

Feb 1, 2013
Commentary

25 Small Ideas for Saving Big Health Care Dollars

Given the size of the annual “health care spend”—$2.7 trillion—summing up the savings associated with very minor cost-saving policy changes is likely to achieve significant aggregate savings, writes Jeffrey Wasserman.

Jan 30, 2013
Commentary

Health Care Spending Growth Tamed? Hardly

The growth of health care costs has slowed dramatically for the third consecutive year, but as the economy rebounds, spending growth could skyrocket, says Arthur Kellermann.

Jan 25, 2013
Blog

In Brief: Amelia M. Haviland on Consumer-Directed Health Plans

In this video, Amelia Haviland presents the results of several new RAND studies on cost and quality in consumer-directed health plans, and explores how switching plans affects the quality of care.

Jan 23, 2013
Report

Hepatitis C: A projection of the healthcare and economic burden in the UK

Work presented in this report sought to assess the healthcare and economic burden of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in the United Kingdom using a cohort simulation model.

Jan 11, 2013
Commentary

Health Care Cost Growth Is Hurting Middle-Class Families

Unfortunately, nearly every actor in our health care delivery system—hospitals, physicians, other health care providers, insurance companies, and the manufacturers of drugs and devices—is currently focused on maximizing revenue growth, write Arthur Kellermann and David Auerbach.

Jan 8, 2013
News Release

More Changes in Health Care Needed to Fulfill Promise of Health Information Technology

Despite wide investments nationally in electronic medical records and related tools, the cost-saving promise of health information technology has not been reached because the systems deployed are neither interconnected nor easy to use.

Jan 7, 2013
Commentary

Health Care Costs Are Killing Us

At a time when our country is teetering on the edge of a “fiscal cliff,” no challenge in health care is more important than reducing health care spending, writes Arthur L. Kellermann.

Jan 4, 2013
Journal Article

Medicare Payment Reform and Provider Entry and Exit

An investigation of the impacts of Medicare payment reform on post-acute providers found that payment reforms reducing average and marginal payments reduced entries and increased exits from the market, which may affect market structure, access to care, quality and cost of care, and patient outcomes.

Jan 1, 2013
Journal Article

The Role of Specialty Drugs in Private Sector Healthcare Spending

Specialty drugs account for a modest share of total healthcare spending, even among the highest cost patients. Even dramatic reductions in spending on specialty drugs would have only a modest effect on total healthcare costs.

Jan 1, 2013
Journal Article

Relationship Between Health Care Quality and Cost Remains Poorly Understood

A review of more than 60 studies reveals extremely mixed findings on the association between health care quality and cost. Future work should determine what types of spending effectively improve quality and what types are wasteful.

Jan 1, 2013
Journal Article

A Comparison of Care at E-Visits and Physician Office Visits for Sinusitis and Urinary Tract Infection

This study supports the idea that e-visits could lower health care costs.

Jan 1, 2013
Journal Article

Evaluation of a Center of Excellence Program for Spine Surgery

The objective of our study was to assess whether hospitals designated as spine surgery centers of excellence by a group of over 25 health plans provided higher quality care.

Jan 1, 2013
Journal Article

Centers of Excellence: No Difference in Costs But Better Hip Replacement

Medicare and private plans encourage individuals to use hospitals that are designated as centers of excellence. Evidence shows that the costs of knee and hip replacements in centers of excellence do not differ from other hospitals, but patients who had hip replacements in such centers had lower complication rates.

Jan 1, 2013
Journal Article

Price Shopping in Consumer-Directed Health Plans

Based on insurance claims for nine common outpatient services in consumer-directed health plans (CDHPs), researchers found no evidence that those with lower expected medical expenses engaged in more price shopping. Consumers did not engage in more price shopping before reaching the CDHP deductible, either.

Jan 1, 2013

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RAND Topic:
Health Care Costs

Topic Synonyms:
Healthcare Costs;
Medical Costs

Research conducted by

RAND Health Care