Advancing data transparency
Hidden Prices, Hidden Costs
Data has the power to improve healthcare market competition by delivering better information about prices, spending, utilization, and outcomes.
Employers and policymakers need more and better data, as well as the expertise and analytic tools to make sense of it, to identify, call out, and correct failures in healthcare markets and adopt smarter, more effective policies and regulations.
Helping Employers Become More Effective Purchasers of Healthcare
The Center advances the accessibility and usability of healthcare price and spending data.
Through its support of private-public employer coalitions, robust data analytics, and targeted policy engagement, the Center equips employers with actionable insights to optimize healthcare benefit purchasing and management.
Half of Americans are covered by employer-sponsored health insurance, meaning that insurance is a significant expense for the nation’s employers. The average annual premium for family coverage reached $25,000 in 2024, with employers paying 75% of premium costs.
These costs, largely driven by high-priced hospitals and other providers, cut into employers’ competitiveness and limit wage growth. For public employers, such as school districts and city governments, high healthcare costs limit spending on vital public services.
The Peterson Center on Healthcare is fostering a more competitive commercial healthcare market by helping employers become more informed, effective purchasers and managers of healthcare benefits. This includes supporting efforts equip employers with the insights they need to analyze healthcare spending and evaluate their options for reducing costs, while improving access to high-quality care for employees and their families.
The Center works to advance state and federal price transparency so that employers have the data they need to effectively purchase and manage health benefits.
Our Work
Featured Initiative
PBGH Healthcare Data Project
The Center supports the Healthcare Data Project led by the Purchaser Business Group on Health (PBGH), a nonprofit coalition representing 40 private employers and public entities across the country. To bring ever-increasing healthcare spending under control, PBGH is equipping employers with unprecedented insights into the costs and value of the care they purchase, enabling them to pursue strategies that mitigate excessive spending and improve quality. The project is providing both purchasers and policymakers with insights into how to make data more accessible and usable.
Helping Employers and Consumers Evaluate the Cost and Quality of Healthcare Services
The Center offers recommendations to improve hospital price transparency, strengthen employer access to claims data, and leverage transparency for competition, choice, and efficiency.
Strengthening Employer-Based Health Insurance Through ERISA Reform
Employers have reached a breaking point as high healthcare costs have forced them to shift the burden onto employees, making healthcare less affordable. In a commentary for Bloomberg Law, executive director Caroline Pearson writes that strengthening the employer-sponsored health insurance marketplace through ERISA reform is essential to ensuring that employees can access affordable healthcare.
Congressional Testimony on Data Access to Strengthen ERISA
Mairin Mancino testified before Congress in the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions’ hearing on strengthening ERISA and employer-sponsored health benefits. In her testimony, she emphasized the importance of data access for employers to better carry out their fiduciary responsibilities, motivate employer markets, and ultimately reduce healthcare costs.
Data Transparency Action Plan for Employers and Purchasers
The Peterson Center on Healthcare is partnering with Manatt Health to research what employers and other private sector healthcare purchasers need from a national healthcare data infrastructure resource, and to develop an action plan for employer and purchaser engagement.
Congressional Testimony on How Transparency Can Shape Healthcare Markets
Executive Director Caroline Pearson summarized key findings from the Center's work and presented a range of policy options to further advance discrete elements of healthcare data transparency at a Senate Finance Committee hearing focused on healthcare consolidation and the impacts on access, quality and costs.
Center Responds to RFI on Hospital Price Transparency
The Center offers recommendations to strengthen hospital pricing transparency, establish clearer compliance standards, and enhance market competition through better healthcare data.
Insights from a Discussion of Transparency in Coverage Data
The Center convened experts at AcademyHealth’s ARM to discuss how they are using TiC data to understand healthcare pricing and inform purchasing and policy.
How much does insurance cost for a family in 2025?
Executive Director Caroline Pearson spoke with USA TODAY about how inflated healthcare costs strain employers and employees alike.