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Health care monopolies have helped make America’s medical costs the highest in the world. Incoming US Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra faced that problem head on when he was California’s attorney general.
In that role, Becerra oversaw one of the largest health care antitrust settlements in US history, targeting a San Francisco hospital system that had bought up its competitors and allegedly used manipulative contracting practices to gobble up more and more health care business in the Bay Area.
This consolidation is happening all over America. Hospitals have been merging with one another and buying up physician practices; health insurers have been consolidating as well. The strong consensus of researchers is that this market consolidation leads to higher prices and lower quality for US patients. Fighting it is one way President Joe Biden could deliver on his promise to lower health care costs and improve access for Americans.
Celia Llopis-Jepsen, Kansas News Service
photo by: Carlos Moreno / Kansas News Service
A skin biopsy at Lawrence’s hospital goes for anywhere from $95 to $600. It all depends on who receives the bill. Removing a skin lesion, anywhere from about $120 to $920.
Now, because hospitals had to release millions of previously secret prices on Jan. 1, the public can see just how common price differences like these are.
Health care experts say the massive data dump huge spreadsheets of headache-inducing medical jargon and arcane billing codes will be difficult for people to translate into what they’d actually pay. You’d still need to understand copays and other factors.
Procrastination is not typically
considered a good thing. But as the world spent much of 2020 confronting the
COVID-19 pandemic, putting certain things on hold became part of the new
normal.