New Managed Care Findings from Brown University Reported (Hospital Payment Caps Could Save State Employee Health Plans Millions While Keeping Hospital Operating Margins Healthy): Managed Care

2025 JAN 13 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Fresh data on Managed Care are presented in a new report. According to news reporting originating from Providence, Rhode Island, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “State employee health plans are consuming an ever-larger portion of state budgets because of rising health insurance premiums. Often the largest purchaser of commercial health insurance in their state, state employee health plans possess a unique opportunity to implement cost containment strategies.”

Financial support for this research came from Arnold Ventures.

Our news editors obtained a quote from the research from Brown University, “This study estimated potential savings from hospital payment caps among state employee health plans and the impact on commercial hospital operating margins. Using data from forty-six states and Washington, D.C., we estimated that payment caps set at 200 percent of Medicare rates would have saved state employee plans an average of $150.2 million per state in 2022 (0.35 percent of state expenditures), leading to aggregate savings of $7.1 billion nationally. Commercial hospital operating margins would remain healthy under this cap, falling from an average of 42.7 percent to 41.7 percent.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Payment caps are a promising purchasing strategy for states to generate substantial reductions in health care spending.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Hospital Payment Caps Could Save State Employee Health Plans Millions While Keeping Hospital Operating Margins Healthy. Health Affairs, 2024;43(12):1680-1688. Health Affairs can be contacted at: Project Hope, 7500 Old Georgetown Rd, Ste 600, Bethesda, MD 20814-6133, USA.

The news editors report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Roslyn C. Murray, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, United States. Additional authors for this research include Christopher M. Whaley, Erin C. Fuse Brown and Andrew M. Ryan.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2024.00691. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

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