“Texas families deserve honest hospitals, real competition, and transparent pricing so they can afford the care they need.”

In case you missed it – in a recently published op-ed in the Houston Chronicle, Hospital Watch Senior Advisor Adam Buckalew highlights how corporate hospital systems are driving up premiums and out-of-pocket costs across the Lone Star State.

Buckalew emphasizes that Texas patients “trust hospitals to take care of them when they need it most, but corporate hospital systems have seized every chance to boost profits without regard for the financial strain placed on patients.”

Read the full piece below.

Houston Chronicle: Here’s How Texas Hospitals Are Shaking You Down

It’s no secret that families across Texas are feeling the oversized burden of rising healthcare costs. There’s a clear culprit driving this affordability crisis: Corporate hospitals are putting profits over patients and taking advantage of an unchecked system that allows them to jack up prices for hardworking Americans.

Corporate hospitals dominate local markets, raise prices by an average of 300%, and send patients costly and confusing bills, all while largely avoiding scrutiny for their actions.

Take the case of Kayla Yates, a Houston mother whose son needs routine visits to Texas Children’s Hospital in The Woodlands to manage his Type 1 diabetes. For years, she paid a $90 copay for these essential appointments, which her son requires two to four times per year. Then Texas Children’s imposed new facility fees and those same routine visits suddenly cost her nearly $600 out of pocket. Yates was forced to choose between her son’s in-person care with a trusted specialist and her family’s financial stability.

Texas isn’t the only state facing affordability issues brought on by hospital monopolies. As the leading driver of healthcare costs, hospitals enact pricing abuses that cost hardworking Americans across the country roughly $240 billion each year.

One of the key drivers? Hospitals gobbling up smaller practices.

In recent years, 70% of U.S. physicians were employed by hospitals or other corporate entities. When physicians’ practices are taken over by corporate health systems, patients often end up paying more for the same quality care. Added facility fees or site-of-care charges drive prices up by an average of 14% following acquisitions.

For example, right here in Texas, a common cardiac stress test costs $398 at an independent cardiologist’s office in Dallas. One floor below, in an office owned by a hospital, the identical test costs $1,600 — nearly four times as much for the exact same service. It’s clear that hospital systems are taking advantage of their market dominance to charge patients more for the same level of care.

If we’re serious about affordability, we have to confront the real problem: Hospital consolidation is crushing competition. The most effective tools to fight back are free-market competition and price transparency that allows patients to compare costs before they get care.

Inpatient care in about half of the country’s metro areas has been dominated recently by one or two corporate hospital systems. If patients — and their insurance providers — have multiple options for care, hospitals will be encouraged to lower prices to competitive rates and eliminate vague pricing schemes such as facility fees.

We need transparency reform to ensure hospital bills actually reflect the quality and value of care that patients receive. Opaque pricing in facility fees and other confusing markups make patients lose faith in their care providers and harm the legitimacy of our health systems.

Accountability can’t be optional when it comes to hospital monopolies. Texas Children’s Hospital accounts for more than half of all pediatric discharges in the Houston area and two-thirds of discharges for children with severe health conditions — a level of market dominance that leaves families like the Yates’ with no real alternative when facility fees suddenly appear on their bills.

Getting sick shouldn’t put your life savings at risk. Patients here in Texas trust hospitals to take care of them when they need it most, but corporate hospital systems have seized every chance to boost profits without regard for the financial strain placed on patients.

Washington is finally waking up to the central role corporate hospital systems play in driving up patients’ health care costs. The administration recently finalized a rule establishing payment parity for physician-administered drugs, and Congress took a first step toward greater transparency by requiring hospitals to disclose whether care is delivered on or off campus. These rules will help prevent hospitals from simply buying up doctors’ offices and charging patients like they’re at a high-cost hospital. 

But this is only a start. Lawmakers must also end hospitals’ anti-competitive contracting practices and ensure patients pay the same price for the same procedure — no matter where it’s delivered.

The current system has allowed prices to rise without increasing the quality of care. Health care will remain unaffordable until hospitals are held accountable.

Hospitals need to answer to patients, not just profits. Texas families deserve honest hospitals, real competition, and transparent pricing so they can afford the care they need.

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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.