Employers’ Hospital Fees More Than Double What Medicare Pays

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 ...