I suggest you read the Time magazine article "The Bitter Pill". You talk as if the insurance company networks are the only ones who are using leverage to push prices paid down. This is no longer correct. Physicians and hospitals have now banded together into cooperative, consolidated practices/groups/networks, and they have absolutely been exerting huge upward price pressures on negotiated payments with the insurance companies.
If the situation was as you described it, the costs for insurance would have been going up, but not at the levels/rates that have actually occurred.
I suggest you read the article. Is is an incredibly well written, balanced, and well sourced piece of journalism. It is also a long and engrossing read.
FYI, the negotiated Medicare rates are actually designed to make sure that hospitals MORE than make up their costs of doing business.
Comments
I suggest you read the Time magazine article "The Bitter Pill". You talk as if the insurance company networks are the only ones who are using leverage to push prices paid down. This is no longer correct. Physicians and hospitals have now banded together into cooperative, consolidated practices/groups/networks, and they have absolutely been exerting huge upward price pressures on negotiated payments with the insurance companies.
If the situation was as you described it, the costs for insurance would have been going up, but not at the levels/rates that have actually occurred.
I suggest you read the article. Is is an incredibly well written, balanced, and well sourced piece of journalism. It is also a long and engrossing read.
FYI, the negotiated Medicare rates are actually designed to make sure that hospitals MORE than make up their costs of doing business.