Opinion: The risks of hospital mergers

In retrospect, it looks as if Massachusetts made a serious mistake in 1994 when it let its two most prestigious (and costly) hospitals — Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital, both affiliated with Harvard — merge into a single system known as Partners HealthCare. Investigations by the state attorney general's office have documented that the merger gave the hospitals enormous market leverage to drive up health care costs in the Boston area by demanding high reimbursements from insurers that were unrelated to the quality or complexity of care delivered.