Key Takeaways
- Individuals seeking care face wide variation in prices for hospital and physician services within and across markets, highlighting why transparency around health care price and quality is so important.
- As consumers become more engaged in their health care, they need meaningful information about the price of treatments to make value-based choices.
- Health plans have implemented a range of tools to provide consumers with the information they need to make informed, value-based choices regarding their health care, and opportunities exist to build on these efforts in both the private and public sectors.
Background
Economists estimate that national health care spending will grow at an average annual rate of 5.8 percent over the next decade – a full percentage point faster than overall economic growth. Not only does the evidence indicate that the United States spends more money on health care than any other nation in the developed world, it also shows that despite the trillions of dollars we invest in health care each year, we are missing opportunities to improve the value of that investment and improve health outcomes.