Tag: price transparency

Considerations for Federal Agencies Tasked with Improving Health Plan Price Transparency Data

While the health plan price transparency data available under current guidance and enforcement have proven challenging to access and use, a renewed focus under the Trump administration aims to improve Transparency in Coverage (TiC) data. In this blog, CHIR experts Stacey Pogue and Nadia Stovicek present insights into known issues with TiC machine-readable files, a recent executive order’s implications, and the issues that limit access to publicly available TiC data.

New Executive Order Outlines Next Steps For Health Care Price Transparency

In February, the Trump administration issued an executive order outlining steps for federal agencies to promote healthcare price transparency for patients, employers, and policymakers. In her latest piece for Health Affairs, Stacey Pogue explores how this executive order could improve areas where healthcare price transparency has historically faced challenges.

State Efforts To Improve Price Transparency

Federal regulations require hospitals and insurers to publish negotiated prices. States are also playing a role in this effort by monitoring compliance with the federal rules and implementing other policies to educate consumers and improve this cost-containment tool. In their recent Health Affairs Forefront article, Maanasa Kona and Nadia Stovicek look at state actions to promote price transparency.

Policy Experts Discuss Strategies to Keep Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance Afloat

On October 3, CHIR held the first in a series of in-person policy briefings on the future of employer-sponsored insurance (ESI), sponsored by Arnold Ventures and West Health. The event, featuring remarks from U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan and a panel discussion moderated by Sarah Kliff of The New York Times, spotlighted state cost containment policies and employer strategies to inform the federal policy process concerning ESI, which covers almost half of all Americans.

New Georgetown Report and Issue Brief on Outpatient Facility Fee Billing and State Policy Responses

Consumers are increasingly being exposed to a new expense when they seek outpatient medical care: hospital facility fees. In a new report and issue brief supported by West Health, CHIR’s Christine Monahan, Karen Davenport, and Rachel Swindle explore outpatient facility fee billing in the commercial sector, including the impact of these fees on consumers and how states are responding.

May Research Roundup: What We’re Reading

April showers bring May flowers, and May was abloom with health policy research. Last month, we read about the impact of ending pandemic-related coverage policies, consumer awareness of the resumption of Medicaid renewals, and approaches to tackling rising health care costs in commercial health insurance markets.

Hospital And Insurer Price Transparency Rules Now In Effect But Compliance Is Still Far Away

Hospitals and health insurers are now required to publicly post their prices for health care services. However, as Maanasa Kona and Sabrina Corlette observe in their latest Health Affairs Forefront blog, the new disclosure requirements have not – yet – translated into data that can be used to identify the drivers of health care cost growth. Their piece identifies options for federal and state regulators to improve compliance and ultimately help support informed health care purchasing and policy decisions.

State Health Care Purchasers Can Push Hospitals To Comply With Federal Transparency Requirements

Federal law now requires hospitals to publish the prices they negotiate with private insurers, yet many of them are not complying. In this post for the Health Affairs Blog, CHIR’s Sabrina Corlette and Maanasa Kona and Marilyn Bartlett of the National Academy for State Health Policy discuss ways that state health benefit purchasers, such as state employee plans, can help increase hospital compliance.

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the individual blog post authors and do not represent the views of Georgetown University, the Center on Health Insurance Reforms, any organization that the author is affiliated with, or the opinions of any other author who publishes on this blog.