“First, do no harm” applies to healthcare policy no less than to medicine itself.
Independent physicians are disappearing from American healthcare. Increasingly, the doctors patients see are employees of hospital systems or insurance conglomerates.
Government policy is the reason for this wave of consolidation.
Medicare’s reimbursement rules, payment advantages for hospitals, and distortions embedded in the federal 340B drug discount program have systematically weakened independent physician practices. The result has been a wave of acquisitions that has pushed more doctors into hospital employment and reduced competition among healthcare providers.
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.
How government policy is killing independent medicine
Wayne H Winegarden
“First, do no harm” applies to healthcare policy no less than to medicine itself.
Independent physicians are disappearing from American healthcare. Increasingly, the doctors patients see are employees of hospital systems or insurance conglomerates.
Government policy is the reason for this wave of consolidation.
Medicare’s reimbursement rules, payment advantages for hospitals, and distortions embedded in the federal 340B drug discount program have systematically weakened independent physician practices. The result has been a wave of acquisitions that has pushed more doctors into hospital employment and reduced competition among healthcare providers.
Read the 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.