Third Party Payers in Healthcare

“Comparing Private Payer and Medicare Payment Rates for Select Inpatient Hospital Services”, Lopez, E, Claxton G, Schwartz K, Rae M, Ochieng N, and Neuman T. Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, July 07, 2020.

The analysis found:

• Private insurance payment rates were between 1.6 and 2.5 times higher than Medicare rates, with some variation among the ten DRGs included in our analysis.
• Private insurance rates varied more widely than Medicare rates.
• The average private insurance payment rates paid for diagnoses related to COVID-19 increased between 9.3% and 22.4% from 2014 to 2017, much faster than Medicare rates.