“Well, now it’s been explained to you, ‘Market Share’ does not mean we want to share the market.”
Cartoon – Market Share Explained
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Health Affairs Study On Hospital Profitability Gives Us Some Important Factors To Watch Going Forward
Bai and Anderson report two profitability-related factors that reflect the effect of hospital consolidation trends: regional power and system affiliation. Regional power refers to hospitals that face less competition in their local markets, while system affiliation indicates hospitals that are part of multi-hospital systems. Both are associated with higher profitability in their study.
More and more hospitals across the country are joining systems that operate outside their local markets. This is due, in part, to the fact that antitrust regulators have limited local market mergers but have not, in general, adapted their models of hospital market competition and antitrust to address non-local mergers. As a result, hospitals in some instances are able to join systems, gain market power, and raise their prices without necessarily improving quality or service. My own research in this area (forthcoming inINQUIRY) shows that hospitals that are part of the largest multi-hospital systems in California were able to negotiate price increases that are consistently well above all other hospitals in that state.
4 WAYS TO DEAL WITH DEADWEIGHT
Unexpected medical bills can cost American consumers thousands
Supreme Court strikes down Texas abortion clinic restrictions
The Supreme Court on Monday struck down Texas abortion restrictions that have been widely duplicated in other states, a resounding win for abortion rights advocates in the court’s most important consideration of the controversial issue in 25 years.
Supreme Court strikes down Texas abortion restrictions
http://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/284974-supreme-court-strikes-down-Texas-abortion
The justices said in the majority opinion that the two parts of the Texas law under challenge create a “substantial obstacle in the path of women” who are seeking abortions and neither provision “offers medical benefits sufficient to justify the burdens upon access that each imposes.”
Two dozen other states have similar restrictions in place, requiring abortion clinics to meet the standards of hospital-style surgical centers and requiring doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at hospitals within 30 miles.
The Rise of Private Equity and It’s Impact on the US Public Healthcare System
The private equity takeover of the U.S. economy has gone largely unnoticed. Since the 2008 financial crisis, private equity firms have gone from managing $1 trillion to managing $4.3 trillion — more than the value of Germany’s gross domestic product. And private equity is now in every corner of the economy: Blackstone is America’s largest landlord of rental houses. Fortress Investment Group is the nation’s largest bill collector. And private equity now runs all sorts of services that used to be under public control – including emergency services we all depend on.
But private equity isn’t accountable – not to the public, not even to public shareholders. It’s run by a handful of extraordinarily wealthy people who are getting richer and more powerful all the time. Today’s New York Times provides an important look.
Cartoon – Long Term Strategy
“We need to develop a long term strategy to achieve consistent quick fixes.”
The Tyranny of Short-Term Thinking
Life expectancy in the US is significantly lowered by three causes of injury
The three injury-causes of death accounted for almost half of the difference in men (1.02 years), and almost 20% of the difference in women (0.42 years). Gun deaths alone accounted for 21% of the gap in men and 4% in women. Car accidents accounted for 13% of the gap in men and 6% in women. Drug poisonings made up 14% of the gap in men and 9% of the gap in women.
