The following report is from the Trends Journal:
Flush with government stimulus cash and payments for caring for COVID patients, major hospital chains are snapping up smaller rivals, independent hospitals, and physicians’ practices left weak by the coronavirus onslaught.
The $178-billion federal Provider Relief Fund channeled government aid to hospitals during the crisis. However, the bulk of the aid went to the largest and richest hospital chains, put no caps on the funds’ use for mergers and acquisitions, and left rural and small-town hospitals to sink or swim, critics have noted.
Many of the chains are stronger financially now than before 2020’s economic crisis and have billions of dollars in cash on hand, The New York Times reported.
About $25 billion of the fund remains to be allocated, and some chains are asking for more time to spend the money they have, according to the NYT.
“Regulators should really be looking at the transactions occurring,” Yale health care economist Zack Cooper told the NYT, warning that the money has made large hospital companies even more powerful.
Representative Katie Porter has called on the Federal Trade Commission to review the extent to which the funds were spent to care for patients and maintain facilities and whether some portion, and how much, was devoted to building healthcare empires.
CommonSpirit Health, one of the largest U.S. chains with 140 hospitals in 21 states, received $1 billion from the federal fund to offset unplanned COVID costs and the loss of lucrative elective surgeries canceled or postponed during the crisis.
This year, it has taken over smaller hospital networks in Seattle and Arizona and started a data firm serving 40 states.
We have continued to prioritize growth.
CommonSpirit CEO Lloyd Dean said at an investors conference earlier this year, the NYT reported.
New York City’s NYU Langone Health hospital group, which took $500 million in government aid, has said it is “exploring a relationship” with Long Island Community Hospital, the island’s last independent hospital.
Banner Health, a 30-hospital network based in Phoenix, pocketed $400 million in public support, according to Good Jobs First, and in October bought the Wyoming Medical Center, the state’s largest hospital.
Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare received more than $500 million from the aid program and bought 45 ambulatory surgery centers in December.
As with the Paycheck Protection Program for businesses, large chains had an easier time applying for and receiving federal relief than smaller hospitals, which not only lacked the staff to devote to the paperwork but had a harder time qualifying for payments because of the way the program was structured.
Often, the chains receiving the most aid and spending the most to expand their businesses charge the most for their services, often twice or more what Medicare will pay for the same procedures, according to a RAND Corp. study.
CommonSpirit, born of a 2019 merger between Dignity Health and Catholic Medical Services, is among the priciest chains, RAND reported, saying Dignity routinely charged three times the Medicare rate when it merged with the Catholic group.
Last July, the Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai hospital network bought Huntington Hospital in Pasadena. According to RAND, the chain was already charging triple the Medicare rate for common procedures when it received $200 million from the Provider Relief Fund and millions in other emergency grants to care for COVID patients.
Huntington’s prices could rise by as much as 32% if the merger took place, state regulators said, based on Huntington’s new parent.
Cedars-Sinai and Huntington have sued the state’s attorney general to prevent the state from capping Huntington’s prices; the hospital decried the state’s “unprecedented overreach.”
Congress was warned of the dangers early on.
Major employers cautioned that the relief money would worsen consolidation if the funds’ uses were not closely directed and supervised; health care experts feared the money would lead to fewer companies controlling health care, pushing up prices for employers and insurance companies.
The big, well-resourced hospitals had a banner year [financially] and now they’re in a position to swallow up smaller, more vulnerable groups.
Elizabeth Mitchell, CEO of the private Purchaser Business Group on Health, said to the NYT.
The group represents Boeing, Microsoft, and other large businesses offering health insurance to employees.
TREND FORECAST: The trend we had long forecast of the Bigs getting bigger and the smalls being pushed out of business continues to escalate. And, with interest rates low and money cheap, the trend will continue. However, when the “Greatest Depression” hits, there will be strong political movements targeting the 1 percent and calls for breaking up conglomerates, multinationals, and hi-tech monopolies.
Thus, we maintain our trend forecast that as conglomerates gobble up more and more, and more people are pushed into low living standards, new political movements, with radical communist/socialist leanings that demand government support for the working class will accelerate… as will “Off With Their Heads 2.0” movements.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
He that oppresseth the poor to increase his riches, and he that giveth to the rich, shall surely come to want.
Proverbs 22:16
In late-January The WinePress reported that 900-some American hospitals were on the verge of collapse and closure. And, as I commented in that report, I in no way defend or support the practices performed in these hospitals and offices (especially now more than ever with the absolute lies and propaganda surrounding Covid); however, from a purely economic standpoint, the mass-closure of all these hospitals will lead to displacement of these workers that will be without a job and the masses that have no way of healing themselves.
In its place are monopolized hospitals and healthcare. And, lo and behold, guess who is making more money: THE PAPACY.
[5] And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. [18] And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth. [18:3] For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.Revelation 17:5, 18, 18:3
These murderous thieves, squashing out the little guys, now get more of their preeminence that they so pompously assume belongs to them, get to charge even MORE ridiculous rates than they were previously!
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I want to avoid hospitals as much as possible and make it extremely rare to never that I ever go into one ever again!
Healthcare in the US has become a death trap and a ravenous money glutton.
I wanna learn natural and holistic health and learn which plants and so on that GOD not big pharma witchcraft, has provided.
That scene with Mr. Krabs was funny but eerily realistic at the same time.
Getting medical care or healthcare from catholic hospitals? Four words: I DON’T THINK SO!
There’s a hospital in Laredo, Texas called Laredo Medical Center and its architecture resembles that of a Roman Catholic cathedral as well as having catholic pictures and statues of Semiramis (Mary) in there. I will avoid like the bubonic plague! I’m betting a Jesuit is running that place somehow.
Laredo, Texas. Mainly Roman Catholic as well as Pentecostal charismatic and lots of church buildings, Satan has totally destroyed that city, Jacob, reader(s).