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Prevent rising healthcare costs by stopping healthcare mergers

Insurance companies, health care systems at odds in cost-cutting push

Another interesting news report about the effect of Catholic health system effects on doctors and medical personnel 

Gov. Ned Lamont rolled out two bills that put a free-market governor at odds with Big Pharma and the hospital industry, a major CT employer. Read on CTMirror.org 

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ONE OF THE MANY REGULATORY FAILURES of antitrust in the U.S. is the nearly complete failure to challenge hospital mergers and acquisitions, which have created monopoly power and degraded services in city after city. When the FTC has tried to move, it has been overruled by conservative courts. 

Most hospitals in the U.S. are either for-profits, or nominal nonprofits like large teaching hospitals that behave just like for-profits. Their goal is to maximize market share, particularly for the most lucrative specialized procedures. That means they spend a great deal of capital, not just on acquisitions but on construction of new facilities and on new costly equipment.

Massachusetts-based Covenant Health experienced $60.9 million in operating losses in 2018, largely due to expenses associated with its $83 million Epic EHR implementation. 

Financial services company Standard & Poor’s (S&P) referenced Covenant Health’s operating losses as part of a June decision to downgrade the health system’s bond rating from BBB to BBB- with a negative outlook, according to Boston Business Journal. 

While regionalizing health care services in this way can improve the bottom line for hospital systems, it leaves some patients farther away from the medical care they need.

Service cuts often follow acquisitions. The cuts have had a particularly strong impact on the state’s rural labor and delivery landscape.Service cuts often follow acquisitions. The cuts have had a particularly strong impact on the state’s rural labor and delivery landscape.  Researchers have connected hospital consolidation to rising health care costs. 

The sale confirms other research that acquisitions result in losses to the hospital acquired and then hospitals, stripped of value, are resold. Manchester, Rockville and Waterbury (now planned to be acquired by Yale) were previously sold to Prospect Medical Holdings in CA, which extracted value for their investors, then resold the hospitals. 

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The Quiet Corner, NE Connecticut