The National Law Journal’s Tresa Baldas has the details of a suit filed by physician-owned hospital advocacy and ownership groups against the Department of Health and Human Services. The suit alleges that reform-bill restrictions upon the expansion and creation of physician-owned hospitals that aren’t Medicare certified is unconstitutional.
Baldas writes that there are currently about 265 physician-owned hospitals in the country, with more than a hundred more in various stages of development, including about 29 set to open before the rule will take effect at the end of the year.
The law “has singled out hospitals owned by physicians in the United States for retroactive regulation and restriction, for arbitrary and irrational reasons,” the lawsuit contends.
“For non-legitimate reasons, Congress awarded competitive advantages to one class of hospital owners — non-doctors — in order to disadvantage and eventually destroy physician- owned hospitals as an economic model,” the plaintiffs asserted in their complaint. “Congress garnered support for its proposals from the large-hospital associations by promising to limit the ability of new and existing physician-owned hospitals that compete with non-physician-owned hospitals.”
According to Tim Eaton of the Austin American-Statesman, “the health insurance law was written in part to limit doctor ownership of hospitals, an arrangement that critics say can lead to conflicts of interest and the siphoning of paying and insured patients, which leaves traditional hospitals to shoulder the burden of indigent care.”
