Health care spending in the United States is on track to hit 19.4% of GDP in the next decade, giving our country the dubious top spot globally for health care expenditure. Given this unsustainable number, health care providers and suppliers must double their efforts to bend the curve by increasing visibility into what provides value for patients and solves the cost/quality equation.
CEO Wayne Smith says Community Health Systems Inc. is showing signs of success not seen in more than four years. The company held its second-quarter earnings call Tuesday, after reporting $3.3 billion of revenue for the quarter, down from $3.5 billion during the same period last year but beating analysts' expectations by 3.1%.
The second-largest employer in Central Ohio, the 12-hospital nonprofit system joins a growing list setting the bar at $15. About 4,200 of its 28,000 employees currently make less than $15 hourly, and another 5,400 making at or near that are getting raises to maintain relative pay grades.
The antivenin can be considered a case study of why drug prices are so high: Head-to-head competition between brand-name medicines may not meaningfully reduce prices.
At the Democratic debate this week, Senator Elizabeth Warren won loud applause, and helped define the Democratic presidential race, when she exclaimed, "I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can't do and shouldn't fight for."
Health-care prices aren’t just high, they’re highly varied. Allowing more hospitals to merge won’t help. A hip replacement in Boston can cost $26,000 to $42,000, depending on where you seek treatment. In Rhode Island, the highest paid hospital charges four times as much as the lowest paid hospital to evaluate chest pain in the emergency department.