Sustainable Health Care Costs

Increasingly, hospitals have merged to form dominant health systems that can exert market power and charge anticompetitive prices that burden the… More

This brief explains how the provisions are used in practice to stifle competition, describes the variation in state laws, and offers best practices to state policymakers seeking to address provider market power. More

The Connecticut Healthcare Affordability Index is a new tool to help policymakers understand the real costs of health care and the challenges that Connecticut residents face in meeting their basic needs. More

This brief, the second in a series on health care consolidation, examines the variation in state merger review practices across the country and identify the key elements of a comprehensive state merger review framework. More

This blog post discusses President Biden’s recent executive order, which illustrates the administration’s focus on revitalizing competition across the country through a “whole of government” approach that encourages the federal agencies to leverage their knowledge, data, and resources in support of competition. More

In the first of a series of three Milbank issue briefs, Katherine L. Gudiksen, Alexandra D. Montague, and Jaime S. King of The Source for Healthcare Price and Competition describe actions taken by federal and state policymakers to address the consequences of health care provider concentration through increased price transparency, improved merger review, oversight of anticompetitive conduct, and increased competition through a public option. More

Nevertheless, with the passage of the No Surprises Act in December 2020, Congress took several steps to protect those most acutely impacted by our system’s lack of transparency and to invest in state data capacity to better understand local health care markets. More

When the cost-shifting game stops, and people get serious about the toll of underlying health care costs — on household and state budgets, economic competitiveness, and foregone investments in other public services — the focus turns to measurement to understand health care costs in particular markets, cost changes, and what is driving them. More