Individuals enrolled in Apple Health (Medicaid), Public Employees Benefits Board, and School Employees Benefits Board coverage - and those accessing behavioral health services - will not experience a disruption in care due to the federal government shutdown. In addition, health care providers will continue to be paid for the services they provide. We will continue to monitor the situation closely and share updates if anything changes.
The Health Care Cost Transparency Board (Cost Board) tracks how much Washington state spends on health care. The Cost Board uses this data to show the Legislature how to make good health care more affordable.
Follow the Cost Board’s work
The Cost Board has four main duties to keep rising health care costs under control:
Much of our work focuses on keeping down the spending of health care insurance companies. The amount that insurers spend reflects the costs that people in Washington pay for their health care. Keeping spending under control doesn’t fix health care costs all on its own, but it’s one part of improving health care costs in Washington.
Cost Board meetings
You can be part of our work. Visit our meetings and materials page for everything you need to attend a Cost Board meeting.
Using economic trends, we set a spending goal for health care providers and insurers to stay under. We call this limit the health care cost growth benchmark — or simply the benchmark.
While the benchmark doesn’t stop health care costs from growing, if Washington goes over the benchmark, we know our costs are growing too quickly.
We track whether health care provider groups and insurers stay under the benchmark. Every year, carriers report how much they spend on health care services in Washington. We collect this information every year in the performance against the benchmark data call, also called the data call.
Tracking this data helps us keep providers and carriers accountable for their part in Washington’s rising health care costs.
Learn more about the data call.
Along with the data call, we also find and study the trends in rising health care costs. This work, called cost driver analysis, looks at factors including:
We report to the Legislature every year with recommendations on how to lower health care costs. These reports include our cost driver analyses and the names of any providers and carriers that went over the benchmark.
Go to our resources page to see our legislative reports, plus other materials on health care cost transparency.
Read our most recent report
See our analysis and recommendations to the Legislature in our 2024 legislative report.
The Cost Board has 14 members, all with backgrounds in paying for health care. The Governor appoints nine of the members.
To help the Cost Board consider all the sides of health care costs, some board members represent specific groups that pay for health care:
Other board members are experts in health care economics and financing.
Four committees support the Cost Board. The Nominating Committee finds experts to join the three advisory committees, which give insights into health care cost concerns.
You can stay informed about the Cost Board’s work to keep rising health care costs under control by signing up for our emails and attending our meetings. You can also check out our news page for our latest updates and read our reports to see our recommendations to the Legislature.
