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Hospitals Merge For Power, While ‘Price Transparency’ Fantasy Persists

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Federal Trade Commission News

Hospital Mergers,Hospital Prices,Healthcare Costs

As president of Health Quality Advisors LLC and as a researcher, writer and speaker, I focus on quality of care, patient empowerment and digital health. I spent three decades as adjunct faculty at Northwestern University after writing the pathbreaking book Demanding Medical Excellence: Doctors and Accountability in the Information Age.

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The study by a group of Yale economists found that while there were more than 1,100 hospital mergers from 2002 to 2020, the Federal Trade Commission took action against just 13 of them, or about 1%. But if regulators had used the standard screening tools designed to flag deals likely to lessen competition and boost prices, 20% of the transactions – 238 deals – should have been flagged for review.

“Much of the underenforcement likely results from insufficient funding for the antitrust enforcement agencies,” the researchers concluded. In some cases where the FTC may want to intervene, the researchers added, federal action is blocked by state Certificates of Public Advantage that give hospitals a green light to combine.

 

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