When someone in Montana enters a hospital with private insurance, the price for care can be two-to-four times beyond what the federal government sets as fair.
Rand Corporation, a global think tank, released a study earlier this summer that showed private insurance companies paid twice what Medicare paid for the same services nationwide from 2015 through 2017.
Put another way, if private insurance paid the same amount as the national program, it would have reduced health spending by $7.7 billion.