someoneyouknow
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Jun 5, 2006
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As we all know, competition is good when it comes to business. People have more choices, service is generally good because the business doesn't want to lose customers, and even prices are better because no one likes to pay high prices.
Except when it comes to hospitals, your choices are rapidly dwindling. More and more hospitals are either voluntarily merging, or the big ones are gobbling up the smaller ones. This results in fewer choices for people which in turn means higher costs, and more importantly, less quality care.
We are repeatedly told having these mega-hospitals will result in economies of scale. allowing them to get lower prices from the insurance companies, drug companies, and even those companies which make medical products. The reality is far different.
Mr. Gaynor also found "evidence from three decades of hospital mergers does not support the claim that consolidation improves quality.”
With all this evidence it should be clear the continual merging and subsuming of hospitals should be controlled so as to provide the people with the most options for their healthcare. In fact, the opposite is happening. Government, as a whole, rubber stamps almost every single merger because they continue to believe the bullshit of "economies of scale". What makes this interesting is this is the same reason we have such limited choice of broadband providers and some of the highest prices in the world for slow speeds.
Rather than doing what Mr. Gaynor found, government intervention to increase competition, the government takes a hands off approach claiming the free market is at work when in reality, local governments have been bribed by the Big Three broadband and cable providers to restrict competition.
But I digress. It's not as if the hand of government can fix things, except when the evidence shows it can.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/11/upshot/hospital-mergers-hurt-health-care-quality.html
Except when it comes to hospitals, your choices are rapidly dwindling. More and more hospitals are either voluntarily merging, or the big ones are gobbling up the smaller ones. This results in fewer choices for people which in turn means higher costs, and more importantly, less quality care.
We are repeatedly told having these mega-hospitals will result in economies of scale. allowing them to get lower prices from the insurance companies, drug companies, and even those companies which make medical products. The reality is far different.
In 2006, the National Health Service [in Great Britain] introduced a policy that increased competition among hospitals. When recommending hospital care, it required general practitioners to provide patients with five options, as well as quality data for each. Because hospital payments are fixed by the government — whichever hospital a patient chooses gets the payment for care provided to that patient — hospitals ended up competing on quality.
Mr. Gaynor was an author of a study showing that consequences of this policy included shorter hospital stays and lower mortality. According to the study, for every decrease of 10 percentage points in hospital market concentration, 30-day mortality for heart attacks fell nearly 3 percent.
Mr. Gaynor was an author of a study showing that consequences of this policy included shorter hospital stays and lower mortality. According to the study, for every decrease of 10 percentage points in hospital market concentration, 30-day mortality for heart attacks fell nearly 3 percent.
Mr. Gaynor also found "evidence from three decades of hospital mergers does not support the claim that consolidation improves quality.”
Another piece of evidence in the competition-quality connection comes from other types of health care providers, including doctors. Recently, investigators from the Federal Trade Commission examined what happens when cardiologists team up into larger groups. The study, published in Health Services Research, focused on the health care outcomes of about two million Medicare beneficiaries who had been treated for hypertension, for a cardiac ailment or for a heart attack from 2005 to 2012.
The study found that when cardiology markets are more concentrated, these kinds of patients are more likely to have heart attacks, visit the emergency department, be readmitted to the hospital or die. These effects of market concentration are large.
The study found that when cardiology markets are more concentrated, these kinds of patients are more likely to have heart attacks, visit the emergency department, be readmitted to the hospital or die. These effects of market concentration are large.
With all this evidence it should be clear the continual merging and subsuming of hospitals should be controlled so as to provide the people with the most options for their healthcare. In fact, the opposite is happening. Government, as a whole, rubber stamps almost every single merger because they continue to believe the bullshit of "economies of scale". What makes this interesting is this is the same reason we have such limited choice of broadband providers and some of the highest prices in the world for slow speeds.
Rather than doing what Mr. Gaynor found, government intervention to increase competition, the government takes a hands off approach claiming the free market is at work when in reality, local governments have been bribed by the Big Three broadband and cable providers to restrict competition.
But I digress. It's not as if the hand of government can fix things, except when the evidence shows it can.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/11/upshot/hospital-mergers-hurt-health-care-quality.html
