As unrelenting consolidation in healthcare provider and insurer markets continues, policymakers need additional options to protect the public from escalating healthcare prices and low-quality care. High healthcare prices result from multiple factors, including third-party payers dampening consumers’ price sensitivity, patients and providers demanding expensive healthcare technologies, and healthcare markets consolidating. While these factors are visible, dominant insurers and healthcare providers can also use terms in their insurer-provider contracts in anticompetitive ways that thwart competition and lead to higher prices or lower quality but remain hidden from public view. With support …

Happy May! In this edition of the Source Roundup, we cover four academic articles and reports from March and April. The topics this month include: 1) the unfilled promise of price transparency to encourage price shopping, 2) FDA’s actions on prescription drug prices, 3) the phenomenon of overpayment for prescription drugs, and 4) results of Maryland’s All-Payer global hospital budgeting program.  Unfulfilled Promise of Price Transparency to Encourage Price ShoppingIn Promise and Reality of Price Transparency, a health policy report published by the New England Journal of Medicine, authors Ateev Mehrotra, Michael …

February brought us a number of interesting articles and reports on healthcare price and competition issues. This month’s Roundup covers publications about 1) projected growth in national healthcare expenditures|2) ACA state marketplace competition|3) the relationship between payment reform and provider consolidation|and 4) the impact of the ACA on individual’s ability to buy insurance. We hope you enjoy! Projected Growth in National Health Expenditures Health Affairs published a report on National Health Expenditure Projections: 2016 – 25 by Sean P. Keehan and colleagues. According to the report, healthcare spending will continue …

Last week, the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, along with the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office, filed suit against Carolinas Healthcare System (“CHS”), challenging the large provider’s use of certain contract provisions in its agreements with insurers. DOJ claims that CHS, the dominant and most expensive provider in the Charlotte, North Carolina area, uses its market power to insist that the four largest insurers in the area agree not to steer their subscribers to lower-cost/higher-value providers. The last major DOJ case involving insurer-provider contracts was the Antitrust Division’s 2010 challenge to …

Happy June! In May, healthcare scholars discussed the usual topics of healthcare price, transparency, and hospitals. And, since the third open enrollment period ended February through April 2016, journals and foundations published multiple reports and articles on state marketplaces. Enjoy! HEALTHCARE PRICE The Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics published an article that seeks to answer the question: Why is health care so expensive in the United States? In this op-ed, the author, a “medical physicist” presents his opinions on why healthcare is so expensive in the United States. He …

The end of summer is always so bittersweet. As the long days filled with sun, swimming, and a bit more time for family and fun wind down, they are replaced with an undeniable excitement in the air. A promise of new opportunities and endless possibilities seems to accompany the start of the new school year. As you gear up for the fall, the August Roundup has all you need to catch up on your reading on healthcare price and competition. The August literature focused on three key topics: 1) Medicare …

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 …

In February, we saw assessments of health policy ideas from the level of national health reform right down to very specific cost saving initiatives. This issue of the Roundup will start with the broad and theoretical and move toward the specific. Big picture health reform In Managed Competition in Health Insurance, Stanford economists Liran Einav and Jonathan Levin examine the potential for regulated markets to outperform single payer public insurance. Specifically, they examined the use of managed competition in Medicare as a means of demonstrating how adverse selection and market …

With the end of summer and school in full swing, September brought us a wide range of interesting articles and reports. This month, the Roundup will highlight seven articles and one report on a range of topics, but there were many to choose from, so check out The Source –Perspectives-Articles and Reports to see what else we picked up! Narrow Networks Jonathan Gruber and Robin McKnight posted an NBER Working Paper, Controlling Health Care Costs Through Limited Network Insurance Plans: Evidence from Massachusetts State Employees, which examines the growing trend …

As a lifetime student turned professor, the end of August always makes my heart beat a little quicker as school returns to session. So if you are also looking for a few things to get your brain moving again after the lazy days of summer, check out these articles! First and foremost, Stephanie Alessi, UC Hastings alum and current fellow at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, published Making the Competition for Healthcare Dollars a Fair Fight: The Role of Antitrust Law in Improving Efficiency in the U.S. Healthcare Marketin …