Health Affairs: Price Differences To Insurers For Infused Cancer Drugs In Hospital Outpatient Departments And Physician Offices
By James C. Robinson, Christopher M. Whaley, and Timothy T. Brown September 2021 The prices paid in 2019 by Blue Cross Blue Shield health plans in hospital outpatient departments were double those paid in physician offices for biologics, chemotherapies, and other infused cancer drugs (99–104 percent higher) and for infused hormonal therapies (68 percent higher). Had these […]
NYTIMES: This Lab Charges $380 for a Covid Test. Is That What Congress Had in Mind?
By Sarah Kliff September 26, 2021 Insurers say it’s price-gouging, but a law left an opening for some labs to charge any price they wished. At the drugstore, a rapid Covid test usually costs less than $20. Across the country, over a dozen testing sites owned by the start-up company GS Labs regularly bill $380. […]
KHN: Hospital ‘Trauma Centers’ Charge Enormous Fees to Treat Minor Injuries and Send People Home
By Jay Hancock July 16, 2021 The care was ordinary. A hospital in Modesto, California, treated a 30-year-old man for shoulder and back pain after a car accident. He went home in less than three hours. The bill was extraordinary. Sutter Health Memorial Medical Center charged $44,914 including an $8,928 “trauma alert” fee, billed for […]
NPR: A Health Care Giant Sold Off Dozens Of Hospitals — But Continued Suing Many Patients
By Blake Farmer July 26, 2021 Vanderbilt University Medical Center bought the hospital in Lebanon, Tenn., from Community Health Systems in 2019, but the latter is still suing former patients over unpaid medical bills. Tennova Healthcare-Lebanon doesn’t exist anymore as a hospital. But it still sued Hope Cantwell. A knock came on the door of […]
KHN: Effort to Decipher Hospital Prices Yields Key Finding: Don’t Try It at Home
By Bernard J. Wolfson July 9, 2021 A federal price transparency rule that took effect this year was supposed to give patients, employers and insurers a clearer picture of the true cost of hospital care. When the Trump administration unveiled the rule in 2019, Seema Verma, then chief of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, promised it would […]
AXIOS: Childbirth highly susceptible to surprise medical bills
By Marisa Fernandez July 6, 2021 Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios Nearly one in five newborn hospitalizations or childbirth deliveries have at least one surprise medical bill, especially if cesarean delivery or neonatal intensive care services are provided, according to a JAMA brief out Friday. Why it matters: Childbirth hospitalizations — which often out-of-network — are the most frequent sources […]
Modern Healthcare: System-affiliated, not-for-profit hospitals more likely to share price data
By Mari Devereaux June 23, 2021 Less than one-fourth of hospitals were fully compliant with federal price transparency regulations in early 2021, according to new data. A study by University of Minnesota School of Public Health faculty found that only 23.7% of hospitals reported all required data on service rates in both machine-readable and consumer-shoppable […]
WSJ: Hospitals Often Charge Uninsured People the Highest Prices, New Data Show
By Melanie Evans, Anna Wilde Matthews, and Tom McGinty July 6, 2021 Raul Macias was rushed to an emergency room last November, with pain shooting from his back to his legs. His breathing was shallow. Doctors at Avera St. Luke’s Hospital in Aberdeen, S.D., discovered a potentially life-threatening tear in the lining of his largest […]
BLOOMBERG: Patient Drug Prices Can Vary by $50 a Pill Among U.S. Hospitals
By Rebecca Torrence June 30, 2021 Costs for common generic drugs can vary among hospitals by more than $50 a pill, a study has found, with some health centers ignoring federal regulations designed to make pricing information easily accessible to patients. GoodRx Holdings Inc., a digital healthcare platform, compared prices for 12 generic drugs at 16 hospitals. Some […]
KHN: A Hospital Charged $722.50 to Push Medicine Through an IV. Twice.
By Rae Ellen Bichell June 28, 2021 Claire Lang-Ree was in a lab coat taking a college chemistry class remotely in the kitchen of her Colorado Springs, Colorado, home when a profound pain twisted into her lower abdomen. She called her mom, Jen Lang-Ree, a nurse practitioner who worried it was appendicitis and found a […]