Economy
Related: About this forumF.T.C. Wary of Mergers by Hospitals.
As hospitals merge and buy up physician practices, creating new behemoths, one federal agency is raising a lonely but powerful voice, suggesting that consumers may be victimized by the trend toward consolidation.
Hospitals often say they acquire other hospitals and physician groups so they can coordinate care, in keeping with the goals of the Affordable Care Act. But the agency, the Federal Trade Commission, says that mergers tend to reduce competition, and that doctors and hospitals can usually achieve the benefits of coordinated care without a full merger.
The commission is using a 100-year-old law, the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, to challenge some of the mergers and acquisitions, and it has had remarkable success in recent cases.
Hospitals that face less competition charge substantially higher prices, said Martin S. Gaynor, director of the F.T.C.s bureau of economics, adding that the price increases could be as high as 40 percent to 50 percent.
Leemore S. Dafny, a professor and health economist at Northwestern University who used to work at the commission, said, The Affordable Care Act has unleashed a merger frenzy, and she said she saw antitrust enforcement as a powerful tool to slow the march toward conglomeration.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/18/business/ftc-wary-of-mergers-by-hospitals-.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSum&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
---------------------------------
'suggesting that consumers may be victimized by the trend toward consolidation.'
No.sh*t,Sherlock!
Someone.watching.The.Roosevelts???
Warpy
(111,261 posts)Right now it's an old film on TCM.
As for the hospitals, somebody should have been watching 30 years ago when the Catholic church started to gobble up and close hospitals so that women in some areas would have no access to reproductive health care.
elleng
(130,908 posts)As.to.Roosevelts&Anti-trust,it.really.was.TR's.issue.so.an.earlier.episode.
http://www.ushistory.org/us/43b.asp
Warpy
(111,261 posts)in so doing is why most people remember him fondly as one of the better presidents. He deserves that recognition. The National Park Service is another, to the disgust of the oilmen.
Otherwise, he'd be remembered as a belligerent grandstander who got too many people killed in useless wars fought because of highly dubious evidence of any threat to the US.