AHA rebukes latest RAND report on hospital pricing

The RAND Corporation May 13 released its latest hospital pricing report, which focuses on prices paid for care at the hospital and service-line level. 

In a statement, Molly Smith, AHA's group vice president of public policy, said, “In what is becoming an all too familiar pattern, the RAND Corporation’s latest hospital price report oversells and underwhelms. Their analysis — which despite much heralded data expansions — still represents less than 2% of overall hospital spending. This offers a skewed and incomplete picture of hospital spending. 

“In benchmarking against woefully inadequate Medicare payments, RAND makes an apples-to-oranges comparison that presents an inflated impression of what hospitals are actually getting paid for delivering care while facing continued financial and other operational challenges. 

“In addition to the ongoing flaw of relying on a self-selected sample of data, their analysis is suspiciously silent on the hidden influence of commercial insurers in driving up health care costs for patients, as evidenced by issues like the recent concerning allegations against MultiPlan. 

“Disappointingly, and despite the many clear and compelling reasons to discount their results, RAND continues to promote their findings as a legitimate way for employers and policymakers to make decisions about provider pay — jeopardizing patient access to care. Ultimately, the RAND study only underscores what we already know — that hospitals are chronically underpaid for Medicare services. Anything beyond that should be taken with a healthy measure of skepticism.”