By Mike Allen
February 27, 2021
Cutting health care costs has always been politically dangerous, and the industry’s biggest targets will emerge from the pandemic with even a stronger hand in Washington.
Hospitals take up the biggest share of U.S. spending, at over $1 trillion per year before the pandemic.
- Congress has shoveled money to hospitals to help offset the losses they took when elective procedures were canceled, but those losses, combined with the very real human toll borne by health care workers over the course of the pandemic … would you want to be the senator who stands up and says it’s time to take on hospitals?
- “If you get straight A’s, it might be the time to ask your parents for a new iPhone. This is the time not to be shy. You’re kind of the golden children, but it’s not going to last,” one health care lobbyist recently told Stat.
Pharmaceutical companies don’t have the same affection from the general public as hospitals, but they’re exceptionally good at the inside game in Congress.