Private health insurers paid four times more than Medicare for dialysis treatment, study finds
A research letter detailing their findings was published online Monday by JAMA Internal Medicine.
The context
Private insurers commonly pay more for health care services than Medicare or Medicaid, but exactly how much more is often hard to pin down because commercial rates are considered proprietary information. But as health care costs continue to rise, employers (who subsidize their workers’ health costs) and individuals (who are paying an ever-increasing share of those costs) are hungry for information that can help them determine if they’re paying fair and reasonable rates for care.
A recent
Researchers at
The data
Researchers used publicly available annual financial statements for DaVita from 2010 through 2017 to analyze the volume of dialysis patients and treatments, and payment amount for commercial and government payers.
The company, which controls about 38 percent of the dialysis market, had 2,510 clinics across the country, which saw nearly 200,000 patients in 2017 and provided some 28.3 million treatments.
The funding
The study’s lead author,
The results
DaVita reported revenue for dialysis and laboratory services of
But not everyone paid the same price.
Patients with private health insurance accounted for 10.5 percent of DaVita’s volume, while accounting for 33 percent of DaVita’s dialysis revenue in 2017, according to researchers’ analysis.
Commercial insurers paid
The government, meanwhile, paid
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The caveats
Private insurers may pay for dialysis services differently, skewing results.
Researchers also noted a discrepancy in the price DaVita has reported Medicare pays per dialysis treatment (
DaVita did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
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