Hospital Prices and Payments, In Brief

This afternoon, I joined RIPR’s All Things Considered host Dave Fallon to talk about what’s happening with hospital prices and something called “payment reform.” You can listen to a recording of that discussion here.

For those of you who want to dig in to the issue, here are links to a few reports, studies, and articles I found helpful. Please feel free to let me know about others.

• Final report from the Special Senate Commission to Study Cost Containment, Efficiency, and Transparency in the Delivery of Quality Patient Care and Access by Hospitals (.pdf), March 2011
• U.S. Government Accountability Office report, “Health Care Price Transparency,” Sept. 2011
• From the NY Times’ “Well” blog, “The Confusion of Hospital Pricing,” by Roni Caryn Rabin, April 23, 2012; and from their “Economix” blog, “Equalizing Payments for Medical Care,” by Uwe E. Reinhardt, November 2011
• Lots about payment reform in the current issue of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law
• And of course, just search on “landmark” or “blue cross” on our web site for the latest on that dispute, such as this recent story.