Lawmakers want to do something about Indiana’s high health care costs. Their first step is a task force to study why costs are so high and how they can be lowered.
Indiana is the seventh most expensive state for hospital costs according to a study by the RAND Corporation.
Michael Hicks, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University, was one of three presenters at the Health Care Costs Oversight Task Force’s first meeting on Wednesday.
He said the task force should consider how the combination of a lack of competition for hospitals and Indiana’s “chronically poor health care outcomes” are both to blame.
“There are things that this task force can do to help either better understand the issue as we go forward for policymakers, because I think this is really in, now, the policymaking domain,” Hicks said.
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The task force’s goal is to ensure that any reduction in health care costs “ultimately reaches the health care payer.”
The next meeting will be on Sept. 29.
Abigail is our health reporter. Contact them at aruhman@wboi.org.