![\"Stethoscope\"](\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/media\/stethoscope_C_20090702124334.jpg\")
Because they can.<\/p>\nBecause they can.<\/p>\n
Some Massachusetts hospitals charge private insurers twice as much as other hospitals. It’s not because they deliver higher quality care or treat sicker patients. It’s not because they treat a different mix of uninsured, Medicare, Medicaid and private-insurance patients. <\/p>\n
It’s because they have market leverage and can negotiate higher prices in their contracts with insurance companies.<\/p>\n
That’s the finding of a report<\/a> out today from the office of Massachusetts AG Martha Coakley. (The report was in the works long before the recent special election<\/a> that made Coakley a national figure, by the way.)<\/p>\n Health-care prices are notoriously opaque for patients; list prices are basically irrelevant, and hospitals negotiate deals with insurance companies. A little more than a year ago, the Boston Globe reported<\/a> that the way one large group of doctors and hospitals was getting paid far more than other providers in the same area.<\/p>\n Today’s report from the AG’s office found that hospitals gain leverage in negotiations with insurers because of …<\/p>\n variables such as: size, geographic location, ‘brand name,’ and\/or niche or specialty service lines offered. Providers use leverage strategically to obtain higher payment rates and more favorable contract provisions.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The report also found that:<\/p>\n Price variations are not correlated to (1) quality of care, (2) the sickness or complexity of the population being served, (3) the extent to which a provider is responsible for caring for a large portion of patients on Medicare or Medicaid, or (4) whether a provider is an academic teaching or research facility. Moreover, (5) price variations are not adequately explained by differences in hospital costs of delivering similar services at similar facilities.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Among other things, the report recommends increasing transparency by publishing the total medical expenses for all providers. <\/p>\n We called and emailed the Massachusetts Hospital Association to ask for their take, but they did not immediately respond. We’ll update this post when we hear back from them.<\/p>\n Photo: iStockphoto<\/em><\/p>\n Because they can. Some Massachusetts hospitals charge private insurers twice as much as other hospitals. It’s not because they deliver higher quality care or treat sicker patients. It’s not because they treat a different mix of uninsured, Medicare, Medicaid and private-insurance patients. It’s because they have market leverage and can negotiate higher prices in their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":650,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/650"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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