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In this column for The Wall Street Journal's Think Tank, Drew Altman explores how price is the major factor that distinguishes the cost of our health care system from those in other developed nations, yet most efforts in the U.S. to address health-care costs don’t focus on price much at all.
This issue brief offers an early look into how competitive the health insurance exchanges (also called marketplaces) are under the Affordable Care Act in selected states. Through analysis of enrollment data released by seven states (California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New York, Nevada, Rhode Island, and Washington) this brief finds that exchange markets in California and New York are shaping up to be more competitive than their individual markets were in 2012 while those of Connecticut and Washington show less competition (less even market share distribution). In several states, market concentration of individual insurers have shifted significantly compared to the individual market prior to the ACA, pointing to the potential for greater price competition in the future and the influence of new entrants to the market.
In this column for The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank, Drew Altman explains why prescription drug spending may be a larger share of health spending than most people think, depending on how you look at it.
In this column for The Wall Street Journal's Think Tank, Drew Altman explores the data behind public concern about prescription drug costs and highlights that the people most in need are the most burdened by the problem.
National health spending started to grow more rapidly recently after several years of unusually slow growth. This analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis helps to dissect why that may be happening.
Recent Trends in Prescription Drug Costs_JAMA 040516 Download View JAMA infographic…
This Visualizing Health Policy infographic with JAMA spotlights national spending on prescription drugs and the public’s views on pharmaceutical prices.
This slideshow looks at past, present and future trends in prescription drug spending with a focus on the role of specialty drugs.
Recent legislation would require drug companies to pay rebates to the federal government when annual increases in prescription drug prices for Medicare and private insurance exceed the rate of inflation. As context for understanding the possible impact of this proposal, this analysis compares price changes for drugs covered by Medicare Part B (administered by physicians) and Part D (retail prescription drugs) between 2019 and 2020 to the inflation rate over the same period.
This analysis looks at in-network payment rates for inpatient hospital stays, other than maternity/newborn admissions, among large employer plans relative to Medicare payment rates. We find that a cap of 150% of Medicare rates would affect 52% of in-network admissions and 36% of in-network spending, while a cap of 300% of Medicare rates would affect 13% of in-network admissions and 13% of in-network spending, with variation across types of admissions.
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