Bloomberg Law
Sept. 18, 2020, 4:01 AM

Employers’ Hospital Fees More Than Double What Medicare Pays

Sara Hansard
Sara Hansard
Reporter

Employers and health insurers pay more than twice as much as Medicare does for hospital services, according to a report released Friday.

The latest report by the RAND Corp., a policy research organization, found that employers and private insurers paid hospitals an average of 247% of what Medicare paid between 2016 and 2018. That’s up from 241% in 2017 and 236% in 2015.

RAND’s landmark comparisons of health-care payments have increasingly become a focus for employers, who pay the bills for about 160 million workers in the U.S. The latest report shows that access to health-care data is ...