Can Purchaser Groups Slow Down Health Care Price Growth?
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.