Democrats Are Ignoring the Power of the Hospital Industry
We have now endured roughly nine hours of Democratic debates for president, a significant chunk of which covered health care. That’s mostly because it’s the issue which engenders the most infighting among Democrats, though it also reflects what base voters have identified as the most pressing issue facing them and their families.
But Democrats are actually united on health care in one respect, from Joe Biden to Bernie Sanders. All of them lack the courage to name the one major obstacle to getting any meaningful reform done: the hospitals and medical providers who create the most costs in the system by a wide margin.
Watching the debates, I got the feeling that there was a swear jar offstage, and candidates would be fined $10,000 if they said the word “hospitals.” The calculation has been made to choose insurance companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers as the core villains. The candidates have put shackles on themselves, content to debate whether to eliminate private insurance or how much the respective plans will cost. The price of health care, not insurance, was nowhere to be found, even though we pay the highest prices in the world, and concentrated hospital networks, not insurers, are largely to blame.
Meanwhile, during commercial breaks of the CNN debate, viewers heard from the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, the main corporate coalition opposed to major reforms to the health-care system. And while America’s Health Insurance Plans, the lead trade group for insurers, is among the funders of this initiative, so is the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association, hospital network Ardent Health Services, Catholic hospital network Ascension, Fortune 500 giant Community Health Systems, The Federation of American Hospitals, Bill Frist’s old hospital network HCA, outpatient group Tenet Healthcare, and hospital management company UHS.
Read more: https://prospect.org/article/democrats-are-ignoring-power-hospital-industry
(American Prospect)
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