Tue, 05/25/2021 - 4:16am tim
by Devon Green, VAHHS Vice President of Government Relations …and, that’s a wrap! Despite its unprecedented nature, this session ended much like other sessions in the past slowly, and then all at once. Legislators may come back in June to address the Governor’s veto of S.107, a bill concerning the confidentiality of certain juvenile records, and legislative leaders have reserved the right to bring back legislators in October. Otherwise, the next time we see the full legislative body, we will see actual bodies, real people instead of Zoom squares, as the legislature prepares to meet in person for the 2022 session.
Concentration in the U.S. health care sector has been on the rise over the past two decades. Starting with horizontal consolidation, it has spread to vertical mergers and acquisitions and megamergers of national players at multiple levels of the supply chain. Given the financial difficulty that many providers have suffered during the pandemic, this trend is likely to continue, reducing competition and increasing prices. In light of this danger, Congress and regulators should take steps now to more fully assess the impact and curb those combinations that adversely impact payers and patients.
There is some help on the way. In January, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued orders to six large insurers (Aetna, Anthem, Florida Blue, Cigna, Health Care Service Corporation, and UnitedHealthcare) to provide commercial claims data for hospital inpatient and outpatient and physician services in 15 states from 2015 to 2020. These directives aim to provide more detailed evidence about how m