Hospital mergers — market consolidation — can lead to health care price increases of anywhere from 3% to 65%, according to a 2022 RAND Corporation review. The FTC’s director of the Bureau of Economics has said hospitals that merge may charge 40% to 50% more than if they hadn’t merged.
Mergers can also result in layoffs and lower tax revenues and have a negative impact on patient care by reducing access to some health care services. With so much research confirming negative effects and as health care prices continue to rise, what — if anything — can be done to slow market consolidation and/or reduce the harms to patients and local economies?
In this webinar, New York Times reporter Reed Abelson; health care cost economist Zachary K. Goldman, Oregon Health Authority; and executive editor of The Source on Healthcare Price and Competition Katie Gudiksen, Ph.D., explored those questions and talked about what some states, like Oregon, have done to try to control cost growth.
This series builds on a recent webinar series produced by AHCJ and Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) on the business of health care called “Follow the Money.” Once journalists are trained on how to “follow the money” of health care, the Peterson-Milbank-supported webinar series will dive into cost drivers and look at solutions. Journalists will learn about ways that states, employers and other stakeholders can promote affordable health care and will be able to tell these stories in the context of their state and local communities.
Reed Abelson
Reporter, New York Times
Reed Abelson is fascinated by the changing landscape of American medicine as more doctors and nurses work for hospitals and corporations, and large health conglomerates account for a greater share of the care we get. Abelson also covers the business of health insurance and how it has changed since the debut of the Affordable Care Act and the increasing privatization of government programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Abelson aims to be endlessly curious about how the health care system works — and doesn’t — in the United States.
Zachary Goldman
Health care cost economist, Oregon Health Authority
Zachary Goldman is the health care cost economist at the Oregon Health Authority, where he has worked for 8 years. He currently focuses on Oregon’s Health Care Market Oversight Program and the Sustainable Health Care Cost Growth Target Program. Prior to joining the Oregon Health Authority, he was a senior policy specialist at Covered California, the state-based health insurance marketplace. He also worked for a federally qualified health center as a project manager and later as the clinic administrator. Zachary earned his Bachelor of Arts degrees from Brandeis University and a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of California, Berkeley.
Katie Gudiksen, Ph.D.
Executive editor, The Source on Healthcare Price and Competition
Katie Gudiksen, Ph.D., is the executive editor for The Source on Healthcare Price and Competition. Dr. Gudiksen is an expert in health care reform and the drivers of health care costs, with a special interest in market consolidation and state policies to address market power. She has helped draft model legislation to improve state merger review processes and to prohibit anticompetitive terms in contracts between insurers and health systems.
Her current work focuses on evaluating the options states have to restrict excessive provider prices, including cost-growth benchmarks and state public options. Her work has been published in Health Affairs, Frontiers in Health Services, the Harvard Journal on Legislation, and the New England Journal of Medicine, and covered by media outlet such as the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal.
She has successfully worked with various state policymakers and stakeholders by commenting on bill language, presenting to various state agencies and officials, testifying as expert witness at state legislative hearings, and participating in briefings and informational sessions in California, Nevada, Connecticut and Oregon.
