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The Only Way To Make Them Do It |
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Turns out, the voluntary agreement by insurance companies (and drug and device manufacturers and hospitals) to hold down health care costs might be illegal:
President Obama’s campaign to cut health costs by $2 trillion over the next decade, announced with fanfare two weeks ago, may have hit another snag: the nation’s antitrust laws.
Antitrust lawyers say doctors, hospitals, insurance companies and drug makers will be running huge legal risks if they get together and agree on a strategy to hold down prices and reduce the growth of health spending.
It’s not terribly surprising that there are anti-trust concerns in the health care industry. We’ve known for a while that the industry is more collusive than competitive, with 94% of markets in this country near-monopolies. I’m not sure why anyone was surprised when these corporations got together and offered up more collusive behavior.
Now, I never believed that the insurance industry would actually make good on their pledge. And in fact, they’ve backed away from their promises themselves. However, as it turns out, the only way to make these near-monopolies hold down costs is to, you know, make them hold down costs. By writing regulations into law and passing a public health insurance option to force competition.
(also posted at the NOW! blog)
