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Hospitals are increasingly owned by insurance companies. The customers are not doctors but shareholders. That is why a cure is seen as a threat.
by d0mine 2y ago
Hospitals are increasingly owned by insurance companies. The customers are not doctors but shareholders. That is why a cure is seen as a threat.
- lostlogin 2y agoThat doesn’t make sense - a sick patient costs the shareholders money.
- simonh 2y agoOnly if you treat the patient. Cures cost money to administer. Better to just deny cover in the first place.
- robertlagrant 2y agoThat's got nothing to do with cures. In that world administering a cure would be cheaper than treating a chronic illness, which is the opposite of what's being said.
- marcus0x62 2y agoSetting aside the previous commenters "the cure is a threat" thing, there's some precedent for this in the US healthcare system in the form of HMOs (particularly Kaiser Permanente.) Part of that is supposed to be vertical efficiency. Part is the idea that it is possible to avoid extremely expensive acute care services with proactive low-cost primary care.
- d0mine 2y agoOne would think so. Unless there are programs that pay you for sick patients (risk adjustment) and you control how much you are willing to spent on a patient. I've made a mistake of consuming healthcare related content due to the recent ceo assassination. Do not recommend.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- marcus0x62 2y ago1) I was making an analogy. 2) I took at look at the most recent CMS data[0] I could find (from 2022,) and out of the top ten owners of hospitals in the United States, zero are payers. I only recognize about half of the parties in the 11-20 part of the list, but of the ones I do recognize, one is related to a payer. I can find no data to support your assertion that insurance companies are purchasing hospitals. They are purchasing physician practice groups, but that only reinforces the dynamic I described where hospitals have to court physicians to drive patients to their facilities. 0 - https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/582de65f285646af741e14f82b6df1f6/hospital-ownership-data-brief.pdf https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/582de65f2...
- ceejayoz 2y agoThe biggest examples would be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Pittsburgh_Medical_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Pittsburgh_Medic... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser_Permanente https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser_Permanente. I keep hoping my local university hospital system will offer such a thing.
- marcus0x62 2y agoI'm familiar with both organizations. 1) the OP asserted that insurance companies "increasingly" owned hospitals. UPMC and Kaiser have existed for decades. 2) together, they represent less than 2% of the hospitals in the United States.
- d0mine 2y agoHospitals vs. physicians groups is a distinction without a difference in this context (people responsible for making you better). It is like on paper J&J is not responsible for cancer its baby powder causes (some bankrupt entity left holding the bag). To make sure I'm not misremembering, I've asked deepseek in web search mode: "Is it true that hospitals are increasingly owned by insurance companies in US" It says: "In summary, the ownership of hospitals by insurance companies is a growing trend in the U.S. healthcare system, driven by the desire to control costs and integrate care delivery. While this model offers potential efficiencies, it also raises significant concerns about the quality of care and the balance of power in the healthcare industry." I've looked at several links it provided and they are consistent with the conclusion. Try it for yourself.