In a much-anticipated hearing last month, Congress asked chief executives from several of America’s major hospital systems to account for the astronomical cost of healthcare in this country.
Lawmakers were certainly asking the right people.
Any honest diagnosis of America’s soaring healthcare costs has to place hospitals front and center.
Sprawling health systems have managed to pad their own bottom lines through a deliberate strategy of consolidation and policy gamesmanship.
Patients and employers have paid the price.
That’s not, of course, how the hospital executives see things.
