Policymakers helped create today’s high-priced, highly concentrated hospital market. It will take congressional action to bring competition — and with it, affordability and a renewed focus on patients — back to the hospital market.
In a much-anticipated hearing last month, Congress asked chief executives from several of America’s major hospital systems to account for the astronomical cost of healthcare in this country.
Lawmakers were certainly asking the right people.
Any honest diagnosis of America’s soaring healthcare costs has to place hospitals front and center.
Sprawling health systems have managed to pad their own bottom lines through a deliberate strategy of consolidation and policy gamesmanship.
Patients and employers have paid the price.
That’s not, of course, how the hospital executives see things.
Nothing contained in this blog is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Pacific Research Institute or as an attempt to thwart or aid the passage of any legislation.
Hospitals Front and Center for Rising Healthcare Costs
Sally C. Pipes
Policymakers helped create today’s high-priced, highly concentrated hospital market. It will take congressional action to bring competition — and with it, affordability and a renewed focus on patients — back to the hospital market.
In a much-anticipated hearing last month, Congress asked chief executives from several of America’s major hospital systems to account for the astronomical cost of healthcare in this country.
Lawmakers were certainly asking the right people.
Any honest diagnosis of America’s soaring healthcare costs has to place hospitals front and center.
Sprawling health systems have managed to pad their own bottom lines through a deliberate strategy of consolidation and policy gamesmanship.
Patients and employers have paid the price.
That’s not, of course, how the hospital executives see things.
Read the entire op-ed here.
Nothing contained in this blog is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Pacific Research Institute or as an attempt to thwart or aid the passage of any legislation.