Program on the Health Care Marketplace

This analysis of 2021 claims data finds that while telehealth use remained high in the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the shift toward virtual physician and mental health care did not materially affect how much insurers paid for each patient encounter.

This brief explains the role of federal and state antitrust agencies in challenging anticompetitive practices among hospitals and other health care providers, including the legal authority of federal and state agencies, the role that they play in enforcing antitrust laws, and proposed options for strengthening their authority.

Prices for medical services typically rise more quickly than the broader economy, but the reverse has been true recently as general inflation rose rapidly. This analysis finds that overall prices grew by 6% in February 2023 from the previous year, while prices for medical care increased only 2.3%.

This analysis examines the potential costs for COVID-19 testing that some consumers may face once the COVID-19 public health emergency ends on May 11, 2023., depending on whether they have insurance and how their insurance covers testing.

This analysis finds that the U.S. had the highest rate of premature deaths amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2021 among a group of 12 large, wealthy peer countries. The U.S. on average had more than two times the average years of life lost per 100,000 people as the United Kingdom, the country with the next highest rate.

This analysis examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic by race and ethnicity through the lens of premature mortality, using the measures of premature mortality rate and years of life lost among excess deaths that occurred during the pandemic.

With the high costs of emergency department visits of significant importance to consumers and policymakers, this analysis examines claims data from privately insured individuals with large employer health plans, to examine the role that facility fees play in rising cost of emergency care.

This analysis finds that, among people with large employer health plans, those with an obesity diagnosis on average have higher total and out-of-pocket spending than those without an obesity diagnosis. It also examines the cost of common surgical and pharmacological treatments for obesity. 

This analysis of claims data estimates that six in ten people with private health insurance – or about 100 million people – used at least one preventive service covered without any out-of-pocket costs through a provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in a typical year prior to the COVID-19…

This analysis illustrates the potential total cost of Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, based on their publicly-announced expected prices, once they enter the U.S. commercial market. It compares the average price paid by the federal government for the COVID-19 bivalent boosters to the estimated average commercial prices across different scenarios.