Cost Containment
Academic Articles and Reports Roundup: March 2017
Anna Zaret, Managing Editor April 2, 2017
Happy April! We hope you are enjoying the start of longer and warmer days. This month’s roundup includes articles from March about 1) the impact of reference pricing|2) policies to promote healthcare market competition|3) chargemaster list prices|and 4) ACA enrollment figures. 1) The Impact of Reference Pricing Reference Pricing Changes the ‘Choice Architecture’ Of Health Care For Consumers published by James C. Robinson, Timothy T. Brown, and Christopher Whaley (Health Affairs), discusses how reference pricing has impacted provider prices, patient choices, quality of care, and employer expenditures. The authors …
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Academic Articles & Reports Roundup: September 2016
Jaime S. King, Executive Editor October 1, 2016
September brought us (slightly) cooler days, the hustle and bustle of a new school year, and a lot of interesting new articles on healthcare cost and competition! This roundup includes articles on 1) Quality and Its Impact on Cost|2) Prescription Drug Costs|3) Competition and Markets|and 4) Hospital Pricing and Charges. Quality and Its Impact on Cost We all know that quality has a loose, and sometimes inverse, association with healthcare costs, but this month some articles really focused on the relationship between quality (improvement and measurement) and cost. JAMA published …
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Academic Articles & Reports: August 2016
Anne Marie Helm, Managing Editor September 1, 2016
This last round up of the summer features articles on a range of topics including (1) competition in healthcare markets|(2) strategies for reducing healthcare costs|(3) pharmaceutical pricing|(4) ACOs|(5) other ACA aspects and effects|(6) post-Gobeille strategies|and (7) antitrust enforcement. We hope everyone is settling into school and work after some time off. Happy (almost) fall! Competition in health care markets: In Choice and Competition in Public Service Provision, by Timothy J. Besley and James M. Malcomson, published by the Center for Economic Policy Research, looks broadly at markets involving services like …
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Featured NYT Op-Ed: States Can Contain Health Care Costs. Here’s How.
Anne Marie Helm, Managing Editor May 4, 2016
States Can Contain Health Care Costs. Here’s How. By RICHARD M. SCHEFFLER and SHERRY GLIED May 2, 2016 THE architects of the Affordable Care Act counted on competition in the health insurance market to keep costs down and quality high. While the law has accomplished many of its coverage and cost-containment goals, its vision of a more competitive insurance market seems to be fading. To continue reading, see the op-ed in the New York Times.
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The Source’s Jaime King and Others on What’s Left For States After Gobeille
Anne Marie Helm, Managing Editor March 13, 2016
On March 1, the Supreme Court decided Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co., holding that ERISA preempted a Vermont law’s APCD reporting requirements for self-funded employee health plans (see our case brief here). This case has enormous implications for price transparency and cost containment strategies, especially at the state level. To lay out the issues and offer predictions as to Gobeille’s consequences, Health Affairs Blog ran a four-part series on the case, including one by Source Executive Editor and favorite collaborator Erin C. Fuse Brown called The Consequences Of Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual For Health Care …
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Academic Articles & Reports Round-up: October 2015
Elizabeth Nicholson, Research Fellow November 2, 2015
We hope everyone had a Happy Halloween! October provided a high volume of articles focused on an array of topics related to healthcare price and competition, so bear with us! One JAMA article, in particular, provided an umbrella view of the October healthcare literature. The article, entitled Insurers Again at Odds With Hospitals and Physicians, provides a historical analysis of the tension between health insurers and physicians/hospitals/pharmaceutical companies from the perspective of Harvard Economics Professor David M. Cutler, PhD. Dr. Cutler argues that what’s at the heart of the United States’ …
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Academic Articles & Reports Roundup: September 2015
Elizabeth Nicholson, Research Fellow October 1, 2015
With fall comes sweeping change—and the health care price and competition fields were no exception this year. September’s literature focused most heavily on: 1) health care and insurance competition|2) pharmaceutical drug pricing|and 3) Medicare/Medicare Advantage. Health care and insurance competition took center stage in September. Subcommittees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committees held multiple hearings on various competition topics. Numerous stakeholder representatives testified at each hearing—including, as you’ve probably already heard, The Source’s very own Executive Editor, Jaime King! Each of the witnesses’ Prepared Statements from …
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What Drives Scalable Innovation in Healthcare? Hint: It’s Not Cost Savings, Outcomes, or Technology
Guest Author October 1, 2015
By Guest Blogger: Amanda Goltz, MPA, Industry Consultant In the avalanche of media coverage, conference sessions, and social media posts around why the $2.7 trillion healthcare industry is one of the slowest to adopt widespread innovation, there’s plenty about the barriers to change, but not a lot of what truly drives the few widespread changes that actually have happened. We understand that the third party payer system distorts business models, the practice of medicine is an art as much as a science, fee for service rewards process, not outcomes, and that …
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April Articles & Reports Roundup
Jaime S. King, Executive Editor May 1, 2015
While April brought us little in the way of showers, it did offer a nice range of articles and reports that focus on competition in health care markets and payment reform initiatives, including accountable care organizations (ACOs). This issue of the Roundup will tackle payment reform initiatives first, then move on to competition, and wrap up with a handful of articles examining state initiatives and opportunities. Payment Reform Initiatives The April academic literature examined the ability of payment reform initiatives, including payment for performance, reference pricing, and provider risk sharing …
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How to fix our hospital pricing problem (and how not to)
Guest Author April 15, 2015
By Guest Blogger: Erin C. Fuse Brown, JD, MPH We are pleased to publish another excellent post by Professor Fuse Brown, originally published here by the Center for Law, Health & Society! The post: Last month, Slate columnist Reihan Salam wrote a provocative article about outrageous hospital prices that are driven, according to Salam, by greed, avarice, and market power. Salam gets a few things dead right, namely his diagnosis that we have a massive hospital pricing problem that is bleeding us dry and that the problem is largely caused by growing hospital market power. However, he misses the …
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