Haley Director
BY HALEY DIRECTOR
Employee health insurance costs have risen 43% over the past decade, outpacing adjustments for inflation and wage increases. At the same time, hospital prices have kept pace with the rapidly rising cost of health care, increasing as much as 31% since 2015. Unfortunately, this price increase isn’t going to slow down anytime soon.
Healthcare costs are spiraling out of control, and the bulk of that burden is being borne by both employers and their employees. While employers and employees here in New Hampshire struggle to make ends meet to afford basic necessities, inflation continues to eat away at the value of every dollar spent. The Congressional Joint Economic Committee’s Inflation Tracker shows that the average New Hampshire household is paying $1,092 more per month to purchase the same basket of goods and services as they did in January 2021.
Along with her Senate colleagues, Senator Hassan has introduced a bipartisan bill to increase pricing transparency and fix a flaw in hospital billing systems that has allowed them to charge outrageous prices that are then passed on to consumers. The Site-Based Invoicing and Transparency Enhancement (SITE) Act is designed to eliminate a practice used by hospital systems, sometimes referred to as “dishonest billing,” by promoting billing transparency.
Dishonest billing occurs when hospitals secretly reclassify a medical practice they own as “hospital-affiliated” even though the practice is not actually located in a hospital. This loophole allows hospital systems to arbitrarily charge patients and taxpayers higher prices for their care. Dishonest billing practices are a growing problem, made more prevalent by hospital consolidation and the acquisition of small medical practices and off-campus facilities by larger hospital systems. According to one report, the number of independent physicians now employed by hospital systems increased by about 50% between 2012 and 2020. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that taxpayers will spend nearly $40 billion in overhead over the next decade due to exorbitant facility fees.
Ending these hospital billing practices by requiring transparent billing is one of the most important things the citizens of the Granite State can do right now to dramatically reduce health care costs. I applaud Senator Hassan’s initiative to work with her colleagues on a bipartisan basis to implement common sense solutions that prioritize transparent, honest solutions.
In Senator Hassan’s own words, “Our bipartisan bill takes on the healthcare industry to eliminate unfair fees, lower costs for patients, and save taxpayer dollars – and then we use those savings to invest in the healthcare workforce. Lowering healthcare costs for Americans is a bipartisan priority, and I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this common-sense bill.” I hope all lawmakers in Washington recognize the great work Senator Hassan is doing and follow her solution-oriented example to lower healthcare costs for all Americans.
Haley Director, MPH, is the policy director of Rare New England. She holds a master’s degree in public health with a concentration in public health genetics and is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health in health services research and policy.
