It should be simple: Patients should be billed for the services they get at the location they get them. A patient should not incur “hospital facility” fees for care received in a physician’s office simply because the hospital system acquired the office. On average, when a physician’s office is acquired by a hospital system, the prices increase by 14.1%. If these billing practices were addressed and hospitals had to charge the same rate for a specific set of services, regardless of where they were delivered, cost-sharing and premiums would be reduced by almost half a trillion dollars in the next decade.

Better Solutions for Healthcare supports policies that advance site-neutral payments to defend consumers against having to pay more for the same services based on where care was delivered. Addressing this issue would help drive down healthcare costs by requiring all medical care be billed based on the location it is provided.