AG Maura Healey has stepped up to the plate on the Partners’s merger with SSH and Hallmark Health. She has told Judge Sanders that this is a bad deal for the citizens of the Commonwealth. Further if the Judge agrees she will go after Partners to stop any further expansion and bring their payments in line with equivalent hospitals. This is a breath of fresh air from our new Attorney General. She seems to have an understanding of the issue Martha Coakley lacked. Instead of getting the best arrangement you can, it is time to do the right thing for the people of Massachusetts when it comes to healthcare.
If this deal goes through it will add to hospital costs unnecessarily, raising premiums higher for health insurance. Besides SSH has the resources to clean up their own act. They do not need to take the easy way out by latching onto deeper pockets. Each hospital if they serve a decent catchment area should be capable of meeting a doable budget.
Three cheers for our new “people’s lawyer”.
Of course if Judge Sanders says no deal, what’s next?
That’s a loaded statement that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end, at times. It’s like negotiating a theft and saying, “Well, they could have stolen more, but we made the best arrangement we could and they only stole half of their intended haul”. It’s still theft.
To paraphrase a line from a favorite movie, (48 Hours with Eddie Murphy): “And I want the rest of you cowboys to know something, there’s a new sheriff in town. And her name is Maura Healey. So y’all be cool. Right on.”
I hope it is clear that any such mergers i.e. Steward, Beth Israel, and the Lahey, have not has any cost saving effect. They are mechanisms to extract more payment from insurers, and pass along the increased cost to subscribers. If this conglomerate is not allowed, all such unions should be dissolved along with their control of practices. Doctors should be oriented toward patients as a priority, not their hospital masters.
of Coakley but did appreciate her. Her commitment on Goodrich is already on the record. Her work on the SCOTUS challenge on climate change rules was great and her guy on the issue, Jim Milkey, is nothing less than magnificent. Milkey is someone we should all worship, a man in the bureaucracy who is both brilliant and nice.
Coakley’s willingness to collapse in front of the health care establishment is not so admirable. Monopoly capitalism, even under the guise of non-profit status, works against us.
an interview with Steve Brill was rebroadcast. He eliminated the health insurers as the culprits that increase costs since their profit margin is so skimpy. He laid the blame on pharmaceutical companies, and medical device manufacturers. I believe hospitals were also in the mix. This is the kind of logic that maintains the status quo. Until we get a hold of the fact that insurance is priced with overhead that is multiple times any other country.
Partners has its own insurance company, Neighborhood Health, which lost money. Why? Because they actually had to cover people who had health problems. We only get a fix on costs if somehow we can make the general public realize that underwriting practices, overblown bureaucracies, redundant services, and hospital control of medical practices is driving up the cost of health insurance. It is not good enough to have insurance if there is too much discretion given for pricing the exact same service from one insurer to the other, and from one group of subscribers to the other.
If (and that’s a real if, meaning sometimes yes, sometimes no) a medical device or a drug regimen replaces more costly treatments, procedures, hospitalizations, etc. Shouldn’t we encourage their development? Wouldn’t economics dictate their price should be in the range of the procedures they replace? What if the R&D costs are very high and outcomes unpredictable? Wouldn’t you want the winners (products) to make money to cover the losers?
I get that the delivery of health care needs to be more socialized. It just seems that if we are looking for more of the miracle devices or drugs of the future it seems unlikely we will get there without free market incentive. These products have the potential to reduce some of the more costly parts of health care.
Their are a lot of players in the system that are making a lot of money and it’s easy to point fingers at drug and device companies.
to your first question but the changes in intellectual property and patent law, propelled by the drug and DMD (durable medical device) industries has warped the rewards system. If you make the newer and better drug, you can charge much more than a slightly older system that has only slightly lower quality results. After all, we all want the best when it comes to our health.
You imply high costs about R&D and I think your point deserves more emphasis. It is one of the reasons that so many diseases in the developing world or even here in the US do not have drug therapies. If there is no payment mechanism then there is limited R&D. The Gates Foundation is doing great work on malaria, TB and other illnesses that plague the developing world because the bio-pharm industry does not see a return on investment that makes it worthwhile.
Pharmaceutical companies are not as interested in miracle drugs as they are big sellers. Let’s not forget that the AIDS virus was discovered by government employees while Big Pharma was working on Viagra…..
my position about the culpability of medical device manufacturers. That came from Steve Brill in his interview. I tend to side with the bureaucratic side to reduce health insurance costs. It is the latter that needs the most attention since it is health insurance companies who put together how and what is paid for the most people in this country. If there is real objective benefit of some new product, fair compensation is, of course, warranted.
are in agreement. The DMD and bio-pharm companies respond to payment mechanisms, as do most other participants in our economy. The problem occurs when they lobby Congress and legislatures to give great rewards to lesser results.
I was so pleased to see this strong pro-consumer move by Healey right out of the gate. Bodes well.
So as in my posting, what should be next? Stop all mergers? Reform hospital pricing?
Another problem single-payer would ultimately solve too.