STAT News: Health systems have much higher prices, only marginally better quality, new study finds
The claims have become almost ubiquitous. Hospital CEO after hospital CEO stands at a podium and promises the merger being announced will improve quality and lower costs. Once deals close, though, there tends to be little, if any, follow-up to determine whether those things actually happened. A new Journal of the American Medical Association study […]
Roll Call: Nonprofit hospitals should act like nonprofits
Bipartisan support for ensuring nonprofit hospitals adhere to missions In an ideal world, every nonprofit hospital would be genuinely devoted to charitable purposes, to caring for the sick, the poor, and the infirm, ensuring equitable access to quality health care. The IRS even has rules requiring nonprofit hospitals to provide financial assistance and other community […]
Axios Vitals 2.06.2023: Hospital transparency rule compliance remains low
Only a quarter of hospitals studied were fully compliant with a federal price transparency rule, according to a new report by Patient Rights Advocate — but compliance is a spectrum, Axios’ Caitlin Owens writes. Why it matters: The findings come as Congress has expressed bipartisan concern over compliance with the Trump administration rule and potential […]
POLITICO Pulse: Will a divided Congress give hospitals what they want?
HOSPITALS LOOK AHEAD — The American Hospital Association, one of the biggest health advocacy groups in the country, released its policy agenda for the coming year — focusing on solving workforce shortages and securing more federal money for hospitals. Lisa Kidder Hrobsky, AHA’s senior vice president for federal relations, told Pulse the group has several […]
FIRST IN PULSE: GROWING COST OF GIVING BIRTH
A new report from Families USA found the average cost of having a baby for a privately insured American to be more than $13,000, with even higher costs in some states. The health consumer advocacy group argues hospitals’ consolidation and focus on the bottom line have led to rising costs, noting that an average birth […]
Washington Post: Severely understaffed hospitals shouldn’t be buying Super Bowl ads
Farzon A. Nahvi is an emergency medicine physician and the author of “Code Gray: Death, Life, and Uncertainty in the ER.” For many health-care workers watching the Super Bowl in recent years, the hardest hits have often come not during gameplay but in the commercial breaks. Emergency rooms across the country have become chronically overcrowded […]
Boondoggle: The National, Bipartisan Loathing of Hospital Monopolies
State legislators of all political leanings are fed up. The United States, rather famously, has the highest health care prices in the developed world. And one of the chief drivers behind that is high hospital prices: Hospitals receive $1 in $3 dollars spent in the U.S. on health care, and they’re more profitable than other […]
STAT News: What a hospital oligopoly looks like
Google and Facebook. Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Those tech and pop conglomerates are considered to be duopolists in their fields. But even they can’t hold a candle to hospitals’ market power. A recent financial filing from a large, tax-exempt hospital system in Orlando provides a glimpse, and serves as a reminder, of just how concentrated America’s […]
Axios: Workplace plans paid more than Medicare for physician-administered drugs, study finds
Employer-sponsored health plans pay significantly more than Medicare for costly physician-administered drugs, threatening access to lifesaving treatments, according to a newly published analysis of claims data and Medicare files. What they found: Price markups increased between 2016 and 2020 for five of the top 10 drugs that account for the most spending and more than […]
The Hill: OPINION: Health care cronyism is fueling hospital consolidation and rising medical costs
Health care consolidation is a problem. Large hospital conglomerates are expanding, purchasing smaller hospitals and independent clinics. This isn’t market- or patient-driven consolidation. It isn’t bottom-up emergence of economies of scale. This is government regulation putting a finger on the scale and giving larger institutions an unfair advantage over their competition. It’s cronyism for tax-exempt […]