Healthcare-industry consolidation was in the spotlight Wednesday, with lawmakers and health-policy experts examining ways to boost competition and drive down patients’ costs — even as a major new health-system combination was announced, Market Watch reports.
Industry mergers are driving up healthcare costs without providing any clear improvements in the quality of care provided, several policy experts and lawmakers said at a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s health subcommittee that was focused on reining in costs.
The lawmakers are considering “policies designed to reduce incentives to consolidate and require providers to compete with one another on both price and quality,” Rep. Brett Guthrie, a Kentucky Republican who is the chair of the subcommittee’, said at the hearing. That, he said, includes “proposals that will ensure patients aren’t paying more for the same service in one care setting versus another.”
Even as the hearing was under way, the massive nonprofit health system Kaiser Permanente announced plans to acquire hospital operator Geisinger Health. Under the agreement, which is subject to regulatory review, Geisinger will become part of a new nonprofit organization, Risant Health, which will focus on acquiring other nonprofit, value-oriented health systems. Read more.
