Indiana set to launch hospital price controls in employer-sponsored insurance market

Republican-controlled Indiana is set to launch its plan to establish price controls on hospitals (Source: “Indiana Takes On Powerful Hospitals by Capping Prices They Charge Employers,” Kaiser Health News, June 22).
 
Under a law enacted last year, five of Indiana’s largest nonprofit hospital systems cannot charge patients covered by job-based health plans more than an established price cap. Hospitals that fail to keep prices below the threshold by 2029 risk losing their tax-exempt status — which would mean owing millions of dollars in state taxes.
 
Since the mid-1960s, the federal government has set prices it pays hospitals for treating Medicare enrollees, as states do for Medicaid patients. Those two government programs cover more than 135 million people nationwide. But hospitals face no such federal government limit on prices for the more than 165 million Americans covered by employer-paid insurance.
 
According to analysis from the RAND Corporation, employers paid 2.5 times what Medicaid would have paid for hospital services in 2022. And KFF analysis has found that hospital prices are the biggest driver of growing healthcare costs.