Noncompliant hospitals are bolstering their earnings by blinding patients to prices then blindsiding them with massive bills that they often never would have agreed to weeks and months after care.
Consolidated healthcare systems–even cross-market systems–don’t have to raise their prices to have anticompetitive effects. They can leverage their size by using the volume of their purchases to extract discounts and other concessions from payers, national suppliers, and from labor pools.
Michigan Medicine anticipates positive financial results for fiscal year 2022, with a projected $233 million operating margin, or 4.2%, on a forecasted $5.5 billion in operating revenues. The results include University of Michigan Health’s performance in fiscal 2022. U-M Health is Michigan Medicine’s clinical branch that includes five hospitals, the U-M Medical Group, U-M Health-West and 125 clinics.
North Carolina’s big hospital systems reaped billions in profits during the pandemic while patients and rural hospitals suffered, according to a new report from the State Health Plan.
Now that the U.S. Supreme Court appears poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, Gov. Jay Inslee and other Democrats say ensuring people can access abortion is more important than ever. This year's Senate Bill 5688 aimed to give the state attorney general the power to block hospital mergers if they would limit access to abortion care, gender-affirming health care, or physician-assisted suicide.
Health industry mergers are a major driver of high healthcare costs, and now, California lawmakers are considering a bill to regulate more of these mergers. Assembly Bill 2080 gets a hearing in the Senate Health Committee Wednesday. It would give the state Attorney General the power to place conditions on, or even block, mergers of for-profit hospitals and other major health care entities.