Can Purchaser Groups Slow Down Health Care Price Growth?

  • Apr 08, 2022

    For years, health plan sponsors have banded together in purchaser groups in an effort to keep prices down and share benefit design best practices. Yet new research from the Commonwealth Fund indicates that purchaser groups have had marginal success in slowing the growth of health care costs.

    Despite these limitations, health care insiders tell AIS Health, a division of MMIT, that purchaser groups have an important role to play in managing price growth. They also say that, while hospital consolidation has a large role in driving up health care prices, health insurers have not done their part to stop prices from increasing — and in fact may have incentives to keep prices rising.

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  • Peter Johnson

    Peter has worked as a journalist since 2011 and has covered health care since 2020. At AIS Health, Peter covers trends in finance, business and policy that affect the health insurance and pharma sectors. For Health Plan Weekly, he covers all aspects of the U.S. health insurance sector, including employer-sponsored insurance, Medicaid managed care, Medicare Advantage and the Affordable Care Act individual marketplaces. In Radar on Drug Benefits, Peter covers the operations of (and conflicts between) pharmacy benefit managers and pharmaceutical manufacturers, with a particular focus on pricing dynamics and market access. Before joining AIS Health, Peter covered transportation, public safety and local government for various outlets in Seattle, his hometown and current place of residence. He graduated with a B.A. from Colby College.

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