Case in point.....Pittsburgh.
UPMC was allowed to buy up nearly 85% of the hospitals in this region, giving them near-monopoly status. They owned hospitals and medical practices, and a large insurance company. If you had a health problem and your insurance did not play by their rules, you were SOL.
Only when they announced that they’d stop accepting Highmark BC/BS insurance did things hit the fan. Highmark defended itself by purchasing the bankrupt and rapidly dying Allegheny Health System to try and quickly set up its own network.
Best-case for the region now is you’ll have your choice of one of 2 monopolistic behemoths who won’t play nice with each other.
There are rumblings from Harrisburg that the state is going to step in and MAKE them play nice. Which is to say the state will basically be taking over healthcare in this region.
I don’t want to see a large chain dominate markets. That would be sort of like having only the government provide service, with no alternatives.
Ooooh—my mom is boycoting UPMC. I think she’d die rather than use one of their facilities.
A BIG part of this baked into the new Obamacare rules. Hospitals are forced to have a comprehensive system to handle patients after discharge because if they bounce back to the hospital after discharge it faces big penalties. So their “ community plan” has to include outpatient clinics , provider nets, rehab, home health, nursing homes, ANYTHING and everything that can prevent the patient from having to be readmitted. Only rich, large systems can do this. Many smaller community hospitals have to sign on with the big systems or die.