Understanding health care price variation: evidence from Transparency-in-Coverage data.

ABSTRACT: Competition in health care markets should lead to lower prices and less dispersion, with consumer choice as the driving mechanism. Several studies document price variation, suggesting room for improvement; however, they relied on selected data from insurers who provide access to data, limiting generalizability. We document the nature of price variation in the private US market across geography, payer, and provider by leveraging a new dataset, implementing a descriptive analysis using the most comprehensive data available: Transparency-in-Coverage. We measured health care prices in 3 ways: percentile distribution prices for common services, state-level and insurer-level facility fee price indices, and regression-adjusted mean inpatient and outpatient prices. Variation is large: the mean fac

SUBMITTER: Whaley C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11798183 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature