NBC NEWS: 'HOSPITAL COSTS ARE RISING FAR FASTER THAN INFLATION AND DROWNING AMERICANS IN DEBT'

The following information was released by the America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP):

by AHIP

A new investigative report by NBC News underscores how hospital systems' anticompetitive consolidation, ever-higher prices and opaque billing practices are raising health care costs and driving the ongoing affordability crisis.

Some key excerpts:

"Hospital costs are among the major forces driving Americans deeper into debt and widening the inequality gap. Over the past two decades, those costs have risen far faster than any other sector of the U.S. economy, said Zack Cooper, associate professor of public health at Yale University. Paying for hospital care is 'the leading driver of health spending growth,' Cooper said. 'And the genesis of a lot of the affordability pressure folks are feeling has to do with health care.'"

"How much does a particular procedure cost at your nearest hospital? It's supposed to be easy to find out. Federal rules went into effect in 2021 requiring hospitals to provide such information in a 'consumer-friendly format.' But pricing information on hospital websites can be hard to grasp owing to huge data files and the complex way it's presented. An analysis of pricing at half the nation's hospitals a total of 3,236 facilities shows that the costs of the same procedures are literally all over the map. And it's the people without health insurance, whose ranks are expected to grow by the millions in the next 10 years, who are charged the highest amounts."

"OrbDoc, a health care technology company that uses artificial intelligence to create tools for clinicians, performed an analysis for NBC News that examined what hospitals charge uninsured patients for particular procedures compared with what Medicare pays. Insurance companies negotiate different rates for procedures, so using those figures would not have allowed for an apples-to-apples comparison. The OrbDoc analysis found that hospitals on average charge the uninsured almost five times what Medicare pays for the same procedure. The analysis echoes conclusions from other academic research ... For-profit hospitals charge on average 8.7 times what Medicare pays for the procedures ... and private nonprofit hospitals charge 5.4 times what Medicare pays."

"Experts say a major driver of hospital costs is industry consolidationhospital systems acquiring other facilities. A 2024 research paper co-authored by Yale's Cooper found that from 2010 to 2015, anticompetitive mergers of hospitals raised prices by more than 5%."

The NBC News investigation comes on the heels of new data from KFF showing how hospital consolidation leads to higher prices and other negative consequences.