Health care affordability has become an increasingly tough burden for Pennsylvania families. Behind this crisis lies a clear culprit: corporate hospital systems that maximize profits and leave patients footing the bill.
These hospital systems have cornered the market, tripled their prices, and buried patients under confusing bills – all while dodging any real accountability.
Hospital monopolies are creating a health care affordability crisis for patients here in the Keystone State and across the country. Hospitals are the leading contributor of rising health care costs, with pricing practices that cost the nation’s workforce an estimated $240 billion annually. One hospital in Gettysburg charges patients 363% of what Medicare pays for the same services — and these inflated markups are becoming the norm for consolidated hospital systems.
Today, roughly 70% of American physicians are employed by hospitals or large corporate health care organizations. When a doctor’s private practice gets acquired by one of these hospital systems, patients often discover they’re paying more for the same care. Hospital facility fees and location-based charges typically increase costs by about 14% after these takeovers.
Just recently, state Sen. Dawn Keefer highlighted a constituent’s story about a medical bill they were planning to pay out-of-pocket that ended up being double the original estimate. According to Keefer, the estimated cost was around $1,800 — but the actual hospital bill came in at around $3,000. We’ve seen stories like these across the country, where patients are blindsided by straining costs well after they’ve received care with no warning or transparency.
This is unacceptable, and the path forward demands honest action: Any meaningful effort to improve health care affordability must confront these hospital monopolies directly by promoting competition and price transparency so patients have options and know that what they’re paying for is what they’re getting.
Here’s the problem: one or two hospital systems are running the show in about half of America’s metro areas. These monopolistic systems dramatically limit options for essential care. When patients actually have choices about where to go, hospitals have to compete on price. It’s that simple.
Transparency reform needs to get real results. Hospital bills should be honest about what care costs and what it’s worth. That’s the real way to stop hospitals from hiding charges and confusing patients with their pricing tricks. Opaque billing confuses patients and impacts the integrity of our health system. While insurers are regulated to respond to prices set by hospitals, hospitals face no accountability in setting those prices in the first place.
We’ve got to get serious about holding these hospital systems accountable. A price transparency advocacy group found that only one in five Pennsylvania hospitals are complying with federal price transparency rules — meaning the vast majority of hospitals in the state are not providing enough information for patients to understand the cost of care.
If policymakers are serious about affordability, they can’t ignore what’s right in front of them. Patients trust hospitals to help them when they need care. But corporate hospitals have broken that trust over and over, putting profits over patients.
Hospitals deserve to face the same scrutiny for manipulating the free-market system that we apply to other industries. In the same way we cannot let monopolies take advantage of everyday consumers, we absolutely should not let them take advantage of patients in need.
Families in Pennsylvania deserve to regain trust in their local hospitals and care providers. It’s time to put patients first and demand that corporate hospital systems do the same.
Adam L. Buckalew is senior adviser for Hospital Watch and a former senior committee staffer in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.