Commercial negotiated rates vary wildly, but they don’t correlate with quality.
If you work in benefits, health plan design, or employer strategy, this new white paper from the Purchaser Business Group on Health (PBGH) is required reading. It pulls back the curtain on healthcare price transparency in the commercial market, revealing just how erratic and random U.S. healthcare price variation really is.
Unlike previous regional studies, this analysis spans multiple geographies and specialties, marrying transparency in coverage and hospital price transparency data with claims, quality, and safety measurements. The result: a disturbing portrait of how commercial negotiated rates are essentially arbitrary. What’s worse, the rates have little connection to clinical performance.