Budgeting

A Health Affairs study of national healthcare spending and where it's going shows that purchases of medical services and increased compensation of highly skilled professionals accounted for spending growth in multiple areas between 1997 and 2012. The study looked at hospitals, physician offices and outpatient centers.

New research published Wednesday found that states that legalized medical marijuana -- which is sometimes recommended for symptoms like chronic pain, anxiety or depression -- saw declines in the number of Medicare prescriptions for drugs used to treat those conditions and a dip in spending by Medicare Part D, which covers the cost on prescription medications.

A new study takes a fresh measure of generic drugs' price advantages, revealing how much more Medicare Part D patients shelled out in copayments for two popular brand-name drugs in 2013. The result: 10.5 times more.

Americans with multiple chronic conditions -- not necessarily those with a poor immediate prognosis -- could have the largest impact on national spending, according to a new study published by Health Affairs.

Net revenue from patients is dipping for some acute care hospitals in Pennsylvania compared to three years ago, while operating margins are climbing, according to a new report from the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council.

The study sought to measure whether having access to such a tool, and with it more price information, was associated with a reduction in annual outpatient spending in the first 12 months after the tool was introduced.

The cost of long-term, in-home care is greatly underestimated, says a new study from insurance holding company Genworth Financial. In fact, most Americans underestimate the cost by close to 50 percent.

Instead of slashing jobs to cut costs and increase profits, hospitals should focus on delivering high-quality customer experiences to widen their margins. That's the word from a new study released by Accenture, which shows that hospitals who delivered superior customer experiences increased their net margins by 50 percent over average-performing facilities.

The study measures how many people were hospitalized between 2002 and 2012 because they were abusing heroin or prescription painkillers, and how many of them got serious infections related to their drug use. It also tracks what hospitals charged to treat those patients and how the hospitals were paid.

Authors liken drug loans to mortgages, noting that both can enable consumers to buy big-ticket items requiring a hefty up-front payment that they could not otherwise afford.