Employers Take More Aggressive Role In Health Care Cost Negotiations

A Tough Negotiator Proves Employers Can Bargain Down Health Care Prices by Marshall Allen.  NPR.  October 2, 2018. 

Analysis Of Hospital Bills Reveals Opaque Pricing And Little Relation To Costs

How Efficiency Experts Lowered Health Care Prices At One U.S. Hospital by Lucas Laursen.  Fortune.  August 22, 2018. 

Americans Rig Their Own Safety Nets

Priced Out Of Health Insurance, Americans Rig Their Own Safety Nets by John Tozzi.  Bloomberg.  August 22, 2018. 

Why Competition Doesn't Work To Lower Prices In Branded Specialty Drugs

Arthritis Drugs Show How U.S. Drug Prices Defy Economics by Julie Appleby.  KHN.  December 22, 2017. 

Tradeoffs in Prescription Drug Pricing

The True Story Of America's Sky-High Prescription Drug Prices by Sarah Kliff.  Vox. November 30, 2016

Low Drug Prices And Shortages For Generic Injectables

Drug Prices Too High?  Sometimes, They're Not Costly Enough by Austin Frakt.  The New York Times.  May 30, 2016

Synthetic Insulin, Replacing Human Insulin, Fuels A Tripling In Price Between 2002 and 2013

Diabetes Spreads As The Treatment For It Gets Pricier by Alex Zielinski.  Think Progress.  April 7, 2016

Corporate Drug Pricing Strategies For Poor International Markets

His Job Is To Sell A $1,000 Pill For $10 by Caroline Chen.  BloombergBusiness.  February 29, 2016

Research Challenge to Drug Prices: Are Skyrocketing Costs Justified?

Rising U.S. Drug Prices Are Focus Of Research Grant by Peter Loftus.  The Wall Street Journal.  July 20, 2015.

Study: Consumerism And Price Transparency Could Impact Nation's Health Bill

Given Choice, Parents Pick Cheaper Medical Procedure For Children by Elisabeth Rosenthal.  The Upshot.  The New York Times.  October 1, 2014.

Institutes of Medicine Identifies Sources of Excess Costs

 Best Care At Lower Costs: The Path to Continuous Learning Health Care in America by Mark Smith, Robert Saunders, Leigh Stuckhardt, J. Michael McGinnis, Editors;  Committee on the Learning Health Care System in America;  Institute of Medicine.

The Institute of Medicine examines policy matters pertaining to the health of the public and was established by the National Academy of Sciences.  This 381 page report contains a wide-ranging discussion of healthcare costs.  It categorizes excess healthcare costs in 6 broad categories for the year 2009.

1.  Unnecessary services resulting from overuse, discretionary use beyond established benchmarks, and unnecessary choice of higher costs services.  210 billion

2.  Inefficiently Delivered Services resulting from mistakes, care fragmentation (lack of coordination, use of unnecessary high cost providers, operational inefficiencies.  130 billion

3.  Excess Administrative Costs resulting from insurance paperwork, insurance administrative inefficiency, inefficiency of care documentation.  190 billion.

4.  Prices That are two high resulting from service and product prices beyond benchmarks.  105 billion.

5.  Missed prevention opportunities.  55 billion

6.  Fraud from all sources.  75 billion.