Editorial Staff

Making Healthcare Prices Accessible

/in , , , , /by Editorial Staff
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share on
LinkedIn
+

Today, Pioneer Institute filed a Public Comment with the federal government urging the U.S.  Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to launch a much-needed national effort to make healthcare price transparency consumer friendly and easily accessible to both insured and uninsured consumers around the country.

The Pioneer Comment was filed in response to a proposed rulemaking by HHS that seeks to improve the availability of actual healthcare prices, including  prices that insurers and hospitals negotiate. Pioneer informed HHS of its numerous surveys and studies that demonstrate how difficult it is for consumers to obtain healthcare prices before services are obtained.

Jim Stergios, Pioneer’s Executive Director, said “Suppressing price information leads to the inevitable result that healthcare dollars are misallocated because price information is not available to help guide decision-making by consumers and businesses.”

Pioneer Institute is an independent, non-partisan, privately funded research organization that seeks to improve the quality of life in Massachusetts through civic discourse and intellectually rigorous, data-driven public policy solutions based on free market principles, individual liberty and responsibility, and the ideal of effective, limited and accountable government.

Related Research

Patient-centered Model Outshines Insurance-centered Healthcare during Pandemic

0 Comments
/
Joe Selvaggi talks with Pioneer Institute Senior Fellow Josh Archambault about his newest research paper entitled, "Direct Health Care Agreements: A New Option For Patient-Centered Care That Costs Less and Reduces Provider Burn-out" and how this emerging service model provided its patients with comprehensive health service throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Study: Massachusetts Should Embrace Direct Healthcare Options

Especially in the COVID era, many are looking to alleviate the increased burden on the healthcare system.  One solution is direct healthcare (DHC), which can provide more patient-centered care at affordable prices and is an effective model to increase access to care for the uninsured, underinsured and those on public programs like Medicaid, according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute.

COVID-19 Vaccine: The End of the Epidemic is Within Reach

0 Comments
/
Join Host Joe Selvaggi and Virologist and Investor Dr. Peter Kolchinsky as they discuss the rapid development, efficacy, and rollout of the newly approved COVID-19 vaccines.

Voting for Health: Party Opinions, Election Results & the Healthcare Policy Implications of Election 2020

0 Comments
/
Join Host Joe Selvaggi as he discusses with Harvard Professor Bob Blendon his New England Journal of Medicine Special Report, "Implications of the 2020 Election for U.S. Health Policy," which covers broad differences in both party’s view of the role of government in health care and what the election results will mean for Americans.

Hockey Sidelined Again

0 Comments
/
After months on the sidelines, youth hockey players across the state eagerly laced up their skates in August. Under current youth and amateur sports guidelines, locker rooms operate at 50 percent capacity, only one spectator should attend per player, and players wear masks on the bench. Unlike in MIAA high school sports, players do not wear facemasks while they play, except during faceoffs. 

Survey: Consumers Want Healthcare Price Information, But Few Realize It’s Available

Great strides have been made to increase healthcare price transparency through online cost estimator tools and a state law that requires providers to give out price information. Yet despite the eagerness of consumers to access prices and out-of-pocket costs, many are unaware that such information is available and don’t know how to access it, according to survey results published by Pioneer Institute.

Staving Off Disaster: Lessons from Covid Applied to the Epic Battle Against Drug Resistant Microbes

0 Comments
/
Join Hubwonk host Joe Selvaggi and Pioneer Institute’s Bill Smith as they discuss with inspirational public health advocate Gunnar Esiason the findings of his latest white paper, "Antimicrobial Resistance: Learning From the current health crisis to inform another."  The episode looks at the challenges to global health presented by evolving drug resistant diseases and how the lessons learned from COVID-19 could potentially save millions of lives.

Study: Growth of Antibiotic-Resistant Infections Could Have Massive Human, Financial Costs

The world was blindsided by COVID-19, but a new Pioneer Institute study finds that even as we continue to wrestle with the pandemic, another threat looms that scientists have long known about but the nation has thus far failed to address: the growth of antibiotic-resistant infections. “Market dysfunction and perverse Medicare reimbursement rates have led to a growth in infections that resist antibiotics,” said Gunnar Esiason, author of “Antimicrobial Resistance: Learning from the current global health crisis to prevent another one.”  If we don’t solve this problem, the human and economic costs are likely to be astronomical.”

Getting Nursing Home Care Right

Pioneer Institute has long recognized that seniors deserve the best of care and that innovative policy solutions are necessary to ensure that this population enjoys a high quality of life in their later years. In the 1990s, early 2000s and most recently in 2017, the Institute dedicated Better Government Competition topics to policy issues related to aging in America. Our goal each time was to find solutions and to take advantage of new innovations that would improve the quality of life and care for the elderly.

Drug Rebates: How Pharmacy Benefit Managers Manipulate Price & Limit Choice

0 Comments
/
Join host Joe Selvaggi and his guest Dr. Bill Smith as they discuss the complex incentive structure between drug manufacturers, health plans, and pharmacy benefit managers. In this episode, they focus on how drug rebates work and how a system intended to optimize value may actually deliver higher costs and fewer choices. Joe and Bill also use this framework to speculate on the price of a COVID-19 vaccine, and who will likely pay for it.

Confronting COVID Constraints: How Certificate of Need laws stifle innovation, increase costs, and reduce quality in healthcare

0 Comments
/
Join Joe Selvaggi and co-host Josh Archambault, Pioneer Institute's Senior Fellow in Healthcare, as they talk with Institute for Justice’s Jaimie Cavanaugh about the effects of Certificate of Need laws on the healthcare system.

Study: Growing Drug Rebates Hurt Both Consumers and Healthcare System

Ever-larger rebates are distorting the market for branded drugs and producing outcomes that often benefit neither consumers nor the healthcare system, according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute.