Corporate hospital systems’ predatory practices are fueling the nation’s healthcare affordability crisis
In case you missed it – President Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday rightfully acknowledged the high cost of healthcare facing Americans, pledging to address its “crushing cost.”
As Forbes contributor Michael Millenson noted this week, however, hospitals – the number one driver of high premiums and out-of-pocket costs – weren’t mentioned.
Millenson emphasizes that healthcare affordability is an “increasingly high-profile issue,” and points to hospitals as the “group responsible for the biggest share of health care cost growth” across the United States.
Corporate hospital systems account for the largest share of U.S. healthcare spending, and their predatory practices are fueling the nation’s healthcare affordability crisis.
While improved transparency, as called for by President Trump in his recently released Great Healthcare Plan, is a strong first step, Congress must also move to hold corporate hospital system CEOs accountable for driving up the cost of care and sticking American families with the bill.
Key excerpts from Forbes:
“With midterm elections approaching, a new KFF Health Tracking poll has drawn intense interest after reporting that 4 in 10 respondents to said health care costs will have a major impact on their vote.
“A third of respondents (32%) said they were ‘very worried’ about their ability to afford health care for themselves or their family, significantly more than even those ‘very worried’ about food and groceries (24%), another hot-button issue, or utility bills (22%).
“…[A] recent KFF analysis of government data [shows] that hospital spending accounted for 40% of the growth in national health spending between 2022 and 2024. That rate of growth was just about double the 22% rate of increase of physician and clinical services, the next-fastest growing component of health care spending over that period.
“Trump’s […] Great Healthcare Plan, released in January, included a promise to require ‘maximum price transparency’ […] [H]ospital price transparency has garnered broad bipartisan support, including the Patients Deserve Price Tags Act that’s pending in the Senate.
“In an election year, members of Congress and, presumably, an administration trying to protect a slim Congressional majority, are acutely aware of the difference between voters’ feelings about their own hospital and their feelings about health care costs in general.
“[…] a report by PatientRightsAdvocate.org, which found that more than 75% of hospitals are not complying with the hospital price transparency rule that Trump supported in his first term, went unmentioned.”
Read the full Forbes piece HERE.
Hospital Watch is a watchdog group dedicated to shining a light on corporate hospitals as the top culprit in driving up U.S. healthcare costs – exposing corporate hospitals’ monopolistic practices in price gouging patients with excessive markups and hidden fees with no transparency while forcing patients and employers to pay more for their care. Hospital Watch is a project of Better Solutions for Healthcare.