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By: Dan Mangan Your less expensive health insurance plan could cost you — even if you use less health care. People in so-called consumer-driven health plans tend to use fewer medical services than people with other types of coverage, a new study finds. But they also tend to spend substantially more out of their own pocket at the same time, both in dollar terms and as a share of their overall healt...

 By: Carmen Heredia Rodriguez  Childhood diabetes rates are on the rise, and a report released Monday pointed to the impact that the cost of their care could have on families — even those who have employer-sponsored health insurance. The study, conducted by the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI), found that children as old as 18 with diabetes who were insured through an employer-sponsored...

By: Christopher Snowbeck  Per capita spending on patients with diabetes hit $16,021 in 2014, which was an increase of about 6 percent or $897 from the previous year, according to a report released Monday. The average person in an employer plan during 2014, meanwhile, wracked up $4,396 in medical spending, which was up 3 percent compared with the previous year. The numbers come from the Health...

By: Kimberly Leonard U.S. CHILDREN COVERED by their parents' employer insurance have made fewer visits to medical facilities and used less medical care in recent years, but spending on their care has gone up, according to a report released Monday. The report, from the Health Care Cost Institute, shows that from 2010 to 2014 spending per child age 18 and younger increased by an average of 5.1 perce...

 By: Dan Mangan Kids are going to the doctor's office and emergency rooms less often, and even using fewer prescription drugs — but overall health spending on children is still going up. A study released Monday by the Health Care Cost Institute indicates that price increases for health services and brand-name drugs were the biggest drivers of higher overall medical spending on kids from 2010 ...

 By: Kristen Fischer  We have the tools to shop around and save on health care costs — but we aren't using them. A new Harvard Medical School study reveals that consumer access to price transparency tools doesn't make them any more popular or likely to decrease health care spending. Do we not want to save money, especially in a health care climate in which out-of-pocket costs are soaring...

By: Kelly Gooch  Commercially insured Americans in some states pay more than twice what their counterparts in other states pay for healthcare, according to a study from the Health Care Cost Institute. The study, published in Health Affairs, is accompanied by HCCI's National Chartbook of Health Care Prices—2015, which highlights differences in prices for more than 240 common medical services i...

 By: Jayne O'Donnell Huge variations exist in the prices of some of the most common medical procedures across state lines, by according to a report major insurers released Wednesday, but some experts say the data is of little use to consumers who rarely know what they owe until the bills arrive. The insurer-funded Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) won't disclose which hospitals or doctors are...

By: Bob Herman Price and utilization are the two essential elements of the nation's health spending tab, and seemingly wild differences in prices for common medical procedures appear to be driving that bill up a lot. One of the most comprehensive, independent studies of commercial healthcare prices shows that employers and insurers that provide private health coverage can pay a lot more for servic...

By: Sarah Kliff  How much you pay for health care often depends on one key fact: where you live. A new study of more than 1 billion medical bills makes this fact abundantly clear. It shows huge variation in the price of basic medical procedures like ultrasounds, annual physicals, or cataract removals. Consider this: An ultrasound for pregnancy costs an average of $183 in Canton, Ohio. But dri...

By: Alison Kodjak  Need knee replacement surgery? It may be worthwhile to head for Tucson. That's because the average price for a knee replacement in the Arizona city is $21,976, about $38,000 less than it would in Sacramento, Calif. That's according to a report issued Wednesday by the Health Care Cost Institute. The report, called the National Chartbook on Health Care Prices, uses claims and...

By: Yevgeniy Feyman Price and quality transparency in health care has often been seen as the missing link for extracting more value out of our health care system. With the appropriate financial incentives, along with easily accessible cost estimators and information on physician and hospital quality, patients could flock to the lowest-cost, highest-quality providers. But a new study by the Health ...

A new study throws cold water on the popular idea that consumers can save themselves and the health care system loads of money if they become savvier shoppers for health care services. The analysis by the Health Care Cost Institute focused on what consumers paid out of pocket, where comparison shopping can result in lower costs. The study found that less than 7 percent of total health care spendin...

In an article from Carolyn Johnson of The Washington Post, it is postulated that there are many different reasons Americans cannot fix the often high prices of health care.  "One popular view of how to corral out-of-control health-care spending is to empower smart shoppers -- to arm individual patients with the information and incentives to shop around for the cheapest imaging ...