Working towards lower healthcare prices

KFF Health News published a profile piece of one woman, Gloria Sachdev, who has worked over the years to reduce the growth of healthcare costs in Indiana. She pushed to get a baseline of how healthcare costs in Indiana compared to those of other states: "Rand published a study in 2019 that analyzed the prices paid by private health plans to more than 1,500 hospitals across the nation. ... Indiana landed at the top of the list, with the highest hospital prices among the 25 states initially studied." Since then, the state legislature "enacted laws to combat consolidation, banning large hospital systems from tacking on extra fees, restricting employers from imposing non-compete contracts on primary care physicians, and requiring health care companies to report pending mergers to the state's attorney general." Since then, "Indiana had fallen from the top spot to the state with the ninth-highest prices."

It seems that the fight against consolidation of hospitals and health systems is a major factor in the apparent success. Consequently, the legislature is now considering repealing its Certificate of Public Advantage law, which apparently allows proposed mergers to be "shielded from federal anti-monopoly restrictions."