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The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted healthcare spending and utilization trends in the United States, though it is not yet clear how long that disruption will last. In April 2020, health spending dropped precipitously as providers cancelled elective care and patients practicing …
COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death across all of 2020, but in December 2020 and early 2021, the illness surged and briefly became the number one leading cause of death in the U.S., far surpassing even cancer and …
As of January 1 of this year, hospitals are required to post prices of common health services on their websites via consumer-friendly tools for patient use. Prior to implementation of this rule, hospitals were only required to publish their gross, …
In December 2020, Congress passed the “No Surprises Act,” which prohibits most surprise out-of-network billing for plan years beginning in 2022. Surprise bills occur when a patient receives care from an out-of-network provider or facility during an emergency visit or …
NOTE: This analysis was updated in April, 2021.Â
Two major legislative efforts passed at the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 – the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act …
One of President Biden’s campaign proposals was to lower the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 60, with the goal of offering lower-cost public insurance to a group that often faces high out-of-pocket costs with private coverage. More recently, …
As of January 1, under federal rules issued by the Trump Administration, hospitals are required to publish the price of health services by payer. The federal rule aims to improve price competition by requiring hospitals to publicly list the hospital …
Researchers have used a variety of measures to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, including deaths directly attributed to COVID-19 infection and deaths in excess of prior years’ death rates. However, these measures do not incorporate the prematurity of …
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, it was not clear how healthcare utilization and spending would change. Although one might expect health costs to increase during a pandemic, there were other factors driving spending and utilization down.
In spring of 2020, …
In 2020, COVID-19 became the third leading cause of death in the United States, exceeded only by cancer and heart disease. However, that ranking includes months in early 2020 when the pandemic had not fully taken hold in the U.S. …