New Study: Medicare’s Price Controls Are Fueling America’s Growing Doctor Shortage
The Pacific Research Institute’s Center for Medical Economics and Innovation today released a new issue brief warning that continued federal underpayment of doctors is fueling a looming healthcare crisis by accelerating the nation’s physician shortage and undermining access to care. Written by PRI senior fellow in business and economics and CMEI director Dr. Wayne Winegarden, the brief (titled “It’s Time for Medicare to Stop Shortchanging Physicians”) finds that Medicare reimbursement rates are well below market ...
Hospitals Front and Center for Rising Healthcare Costs
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 ...
Left And Right Agree—Hospital Consolidation Is Driving Up Healthcare Costs
A growing bipartisan consensus is emerging around one of the biggest drivers of America’s healthcare affordability crisis: hospital consolidation. Two reports published this spring—one from the market-oriented Paragon Health Institute and another from the progressive advocacy group Families USA—arrive at remarkably similar conclusions. Large hospital systems have gained enormous market power in recent years. That market power has enabled them to command higher prices—and sustain healthy balance sheets. That agreement matters because healthcare debates in ...
Trending Topics
Studies
