Posted on 03/27/2014 7:09:07 PM PDT by kingattax
The problems with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act may be masking another major change in the way health care is delivered to U.S. consumers, experts believe.
At The Atlantic's Health Care Forum in Washington on Thursday, health care and business professionals said that there’s an increasing trend in the industry toward cutting insurance companies out of the process entirely, as large, regional hospital systems move into the insurance business.
Dr. Kenneth L. Davis, CEO and president of Mount Sinai Health System, the largest health care provider in the state of New York, said that starting next year, Mt. Sinai will begin offering its own Medicare Advantage plan. It will look for other opportunities to bring premium payments directly into the hospital system, rather than filtering them through insurance companies.
Davis said he expects organizations similar to his to move in the same direction. “Inevitably the large systems are going to move to take part of the premium dollar,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
While I do think you make a good point, what do you think the impact of all the insurance money going directly to hospitals would have on the average cost of prices?
I think you also lose sight of the fact that hospitals would in effect be selling policies directly to patients, allowing them to pay monthly fees for coverage.
They would be self-insuring, instead of running things through a middle-man, traditional insurance.
All this money going directly to health care would have a very positive impact on the health care industry, and I believe the public to as a result.
What is a big hospital corp with a large slice of a state’s hospital business and running a “preferred provider network” of doctors and other healthcare providers as well? A cartel.
Oh! And by the way, remember when it was against the law for investment banks and commercial banks and insurance companies to be in business together under the Glass-Stiegel Act?
All you'd be doing is making it possible for hospital administrators to charge whatever-the-heck they felt like because they could always just raise the rates to the patients to cover it no matter how big! They'd start by making sure the rates were high enough to cover all the dead-beats that game the system and the border invaders that won't pay anybodys premiums.
I think you'd better rethink your position because right now, the only one riding herd on Dr. groups and Drug companies and greedy hospital administrations are the insurers who eak out between 3% to 5% profit as a rule.
Hey! It's all one big water balloon! You push in on it here and it pops out over there on the oposite side!!!
The only job of the insurer is to pay salaries, commissions and reserve for and pay claims!!!
C'mon man… Think!!!
You lose oversight of an insurance company cutting hospitals from the network for too many medical mistakes and deaths.
And patients get trapped into local networks, while hospitals get to centralize care by shutting down doctors who are independent of the hospital.
I have sat in meetings where the staff tried to come up with new ways to cut costs. I have watched as hospitals have gotten dirtier. I have watched as equipment has gotten cheaper. I have watched as hospital chains have gone belly up. I have watched trauma centers close. I have watched many other hospitals close their doors.
I have watched as employees of hospitals went with no raises for the better part of a decade, as administration officials from both parties made statements to the effect, “Well, we have to provide service to these indigents, so hospitals, doctors, and other health care providers will simply have to make do with less.”
Make do with less. It’s a joke. The Obama folks didn’t even include hospital administrators or physicians in their deliberations. They merely assumed that hospitals make a lot of money, and they could easily cut more.
Each new joker to come along fails to realize that hospitals have been under the gun to cut costs for the last thirty years. It all started with the Medical Malpractice insurance fiasco, and then the government came in behind that to limit what it would pay for each specific purpose, and then the insurance companies saw that and decided they would do the same thing.
Are you aware that some hospitals today actually provide maternity services at a loss? Are you aware that the DRGs often don’t cover the costs the hospital incurs on a patient? Are you aware that an indigent patient can come into a hospital, get an attorney, and be almost impossible to evict?
Yes, please do think...
“What you will have then is defense attorney, prosecutor, judge and jury all on the same team, THE HOSPITAL TEAM.”
You are correct, and this would be a disaster, for a great number of reasons.
The need to quell the herd, baby boomers reaching old age is not acceptable, solent green on the way. The longer we stay alive the longer we collect our social security we legitimatley paid into all our lives, you know the bottomless pit the politicians have emptied TO SATISFY THEIR ENTITLEMENT CONSTITUTANCY leaving behind an IOU.
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