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It is well documented that the U.S. is an outlier among peer countries when it comes to health spending, and recent Peterson-KFF analysis finds that the cost of inpatient and outpatient care is the primary driver behind this gap in …
Employer-based health insurance is the largest source of health coverage for the nonelderly, covering 58% of this population in 2018. The workplace has long been a significant source of coverage for those in working families, although its importance has been …
The term “surprise medical bill” describes charges arising when an insured person inadvertently receives care from an out-of-network provider. Surprise medical bills can arise in an emergency when the patient has no ability to select the emergency room, treating physicians, …
There has been considerable attention to the issue of “surprise-medical bills,” or the occurrence of out-of-network charges when a patient was unaware of charges and therefore could not reasonably avoid them. Earlier this year, we estimated that 18% of emergency …
Collectively, employers are the largest purchaser of health care in the United States, providing benefits for over 153 million people. There is considerable interest in how employers can use their purchasing power to improve quality and reduce cost in the …
Cost-sharing between insurance providers and patients has increasingly become a topic of public discussion. In particular, the increasing proportion that enrollees are paying for healthcare has been an area of concern. For example, in the ten years from 2006 to …
Note: An updated chart collection explores more recent data on this topic here.
Recent surveys have found that while most people taking prescriptions are able to afford the costs, a sizable share reports having difficulty affording their medication (26% of …
In a given year, a small portion of the population is responsible for a very large percentage of total health spending. We tend to focus on averages when discussing health spending, but individuals’ health status – and thus their need …
An updated version of this brief is available here.
Rising cost-sharing for people with health insurance has drawn a good deal of public attention in recent years. For example, the average deductible for people with employer-provided health coverage rose from …
Health spending is very concentrated among a small portion of the population, with 50% of spending focused on the top 5% of spenders in any one year.
With so much spending concentrated among a few very sick people, efforts to …