Essentia Health is partnering with Moose Lake's Mercy Hospital in a move that would expand the Duluth-based provider's regional footprint and shore up the rural hospital's finances. "It's a scary time for small hospitals," said Dr. Jon Pryor, Essentia's president of operations in northeast Minnesota and northwest Wisconsin. "There's safety in numbers."
The parent company of Danbury and Norwalk hospitals lost $13 million in 2018 before it merged with New York hospitals to form a new regional health network called Nuvance.
Arline Feilen lost her husband to suicide in 2013. Three years later, she lost her dad to cancer. And this February, she lost her 89-year-old mom to a cascade of health problems. "We were like glue, and that first Mother's Day without her was killer. It just dragged me down," said Feilen, who is 56 and lives in suburban Chicago. "It was just loss after loss after loss, and I just crumbled."
"Junk insurance," as Democrats call it, isn't going anywhere. A resolution to overturn President Trump's rule that allows states to sell plans that violate Obamacare failed in the Senate on Wednesday.
Private investment in U.S. health care has grown significantly over the past decade thanks to investors who have been keen on getting into a large, rapidly growing, and recession-proof market with historically high returns. Private equity and venture capital firms are investing in everything from health technology startups to addiction treatment facilities to physician practices.
Like the proverbial tree falling in the forest, if the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services makes a major announcement about how its Shared Savings Program saved three-quarters of a billion dollars last year alone and no one notices, did the savings really matter?