In Providence, The Miriam and Rhode Island hospitals have worked for decades to provide the highest quality medical care for all of our community. Our patients often face the most serious and life-threatening diagnoses and we as physicians — cardiologists, neurosurgeons, and oncologists, among other specialties — provide high-quality care for a great many of those patients.
The S&P 500 health-care sector fell 4.4% last week, its worst weekly decline since late December. Health care’s sharp drop comes as investors worry that left-leaning policy ideas like universal health coverage are gaining support, which could hinder corporate profits for companies in the space.
One of the biggest threats to your retirement solvency may be the cost of health care and prescription drugs. A study by West Health and Gallup shows that in the past 12 months, seniors have withdrawn an estimated $22 billion from their long-term savings for health-care-related expenses. The average amount people pulled out was $3,789.
For a patient’s knee replacement, Medicare will pay a hospital $17,000. The same hospital can get more than twice as much, or about $37,000, for the same surgery on a patient with private insurance. Or take another example: One hospital would get about $4,200 from Medicare for removing someone’s gallbladder.
As Massachusetts health care becomes increasingly dominated by large health systems, more than a dozen community hospitals are banding together in a new partnership. Under the arrangement, called the Massachusetts Value Alliance, hospitals are working together to slash costs by buying some supplies and services together. By teaming up, they have greater leverage in negotiating prices with vendors that sell equipment, software, and other things hospitals need.
Obamacare could eventually be replaced by Medicare for All, and that’s bad news for big health insurers, the biggest beneficiaries of the program. Medicare for All, a healthcare system operated by the government, has been gaining traction recently on both ends of the political spectrum. And that raises the prospect that such a system will become a reality one day.