A growing bipartisan consensus is emerging around one of the biggest drivers of America’s healthcare affordability crisis: hospital consolidation.
Two reports published this spring—one from the market-oriented Paragon Health Institute and another from the progressive advocacy group Families USA—arrive at remarkably similar conclusions. Large hospital systems have gained enormous market power in recent years. That market power has enabled them to command higher prices—and sustain healthy balance sheets.
That agreement matters because healthcare debates in Washington rarely produce much ideological overlap. But when organizations on opposite sides of the political spectrum identify the same problem, policymakers should pay attention.
