Insurer-backed group puts focus on hospital costs
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A coalition backed by health insurers and employers is launching a new a new effort to showcase hospital pricing as a central driver of rising health care costs, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: Health care affordability is emerging as a key election-year issue, with the Trump administration and many in Congress increasingly questioning why drug prices and insurance premiums are as high as they are.
What we're hearing: Hospital Watch is calling for more scrutiny on hospitals — which account for the largest share of U.S. health spending.
- The venture is an initiative of Better Solutions for Healthcare, a coalition of health insurers and employer purchasers.
- "Lawmakers have begun to understand that they can have a health care debate about affordability in other parts of the health care ecosystem," said Adam Buckalew, senior adviser for the initiative and a health care lobbyist.
- "But it will not move the needle until you bring hospitals into the fold," he said.
State of play: Hospital Watch will highlight media reports about hospital pricing issues that the group says drive up system costs, like pricing markups and facility fees.
- The group also plans to publish its own reports and advocate for policies like stopping anticompetitive hospital contracting practices and improving enforcement of hospital price transparency rules, Buckalew told Axios.
- Hospitals have been required to post pricing information online since 2021, but there isn't evidence that patients are actually using that information, KFF Health News recently reported.
The other side: Hospitals pushed back on the group's claim to be a watchdog effort.
- American Hospital Association CEO Rick Pollack noted that federal actuaries said earlier this year that health care spending growth in 2024 came from more utilization and higher intensity of services rendered, rather than rising costs.
- Hospital Watch amounts to "insurers deflecting from the fact that they have continuously increased out-of-pocket costs for patients, making access to health care unaffordable for hardworking Americans," said a spokesperson for the Federation of American Hospitals, which represents for-profit systems.
- "The fact is that hospitals are there for patients even when insurers turn their back."
