Articles from my Inbox as usual. There is a common thread or threads here of private equity getting more involved. It is bad enough with ACOs buying up medical facilities. We are losing control of healthcare. “Insurers are taking decisions out of the hands of physicians, says ortho surgeon,” beckersasc.com Dr. Grant Shifflett: I don’t want to paint a bleak picture, but I look at this in terms of the voice we have as physicians. And it seems like every day that voice is getting stripped away more and more by insurers denying care, determining what we can and can’t do and taking away decisions from us. … I’m in a private practice. I work for myself and I make my own decisions, but I still have to answer to the insurance companies. Not a day goes
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Articles from my Inbox as usual. There is a common thread or threads here of private equity getting more involved. It is bad enough with ACOs buying up medical facilities. We are losing control of healthcare.
“Insurers are taking decisions out of the hands of physicians, says ortho surgeon,” beckersasc.com
Dr. Grant Shifflett: I don’t want to paint a bleak picture, but I look at this in terms of the voice we have as physicians. And it seems like every day that voice is getting stripped away more and more by insurers denying care, determining what we can and can’t do and taking away decisions from us. … I’m in a private practice. I work for myself and I make my own decisions, but I still have to answer to the insurance companies. Not a day goes by that I [don’t] tell patients, “Unfortunately … insurance companies make medical decisions, doctors don’t.” That’s a pretty sad state of affairs.
More Physicians Are Now Employees Rather Than Owners | MedPage Today
“This has been going on for probably 40 years,” said Joseph Sellers, MD, president of the Medical Society of the State of New York. “There has been a change from physicians working in solo practice into group practices, into larger groups, and into groups affiliated or groups owned by a health system, similar to the consolidation of our hospitals from individual hospitals into systems.”
As of this year, the nation’s top eight health systems, ranked by number of affiliated clinicians, boasted more than 20,000 providers each (these figures can include nurse practitioners and physician assistants).
Me:This is a take on the growth of ACOs which evolved out of the ACA. This goes into detail on what is happening to healthcare.
Is Private Equity a Dangerous Employer? | MedPage Today
Overall, current research shows that the estimated annual deal values for private equity-backed healthcare acquisitions jumped from about $42 billion in 2010 to almost $120 billion in 2019.Research also predicts this rate will only accelerate in the years to come. In addition to KKR and Blackstone, other private equity firms that have made moves into healthcare include Apollo Global Management and The Carlyle Group.
Me: Current research numbers are taken from Private Equity I Healthcare Report berkeley.edu, Page 8. This an inciteful report on where healthcare consolidation is going, the impact private equity has had on it, and what we can expect going forward. Single Payer anyone?
Total number of reported private equity deals in US healthcare reached a new peak of 937, with the largest share of deals (364) occurring in the clinics and outpatient sector. Year 2020 PE buyouts were up 18%, the highest ever.
Here’s Why We’re Reporting on Healthcare Ownership | MedPage Today
Overall, physicians tell us they feel they have less and less control over the practice of medicine as business interests supersede patient care concerns.
Although this evolution has happened over decades, the profession reached a clear tipping point this year when the American Medical Association’s biennial private practice survey dipped below 50% for the first time since its inception nearly a decade earlier.
Documentary Seeks Truth Behind ‘Super-Villain’ of Drug Prices | MedPage Today
Shkreli – the son of janitors from Eastern Europe – grew up in Brooklyn, and had dreams of making it big, according to the documentary. And, he did, at a very young age, working on Wall Street. But Shkreli soon branched out, moving into the pharmaceutical sector, where he focused on companies that bought orphan drugs — those used to treat rare diseases that afflict relatively small numbers of people.
Shkreli’s main mark on society came in 2015, when his company Turing Pharmaceuticals hiked the price of a life-saving medication, Daraprim (pyrimethamine), from $13.50 to $750 per pill.
Here’s Why We’re Reporting on Healthcare Ownership | MedPage Today
Doctors lament the vast amounts of money spent on C-suite executives and administrators; the middlemen like pharmacy benefit managers that siphon too much cash from the system; hospitals mandating in-system referrals at the expense of quality; colleagues being silenced for speaking out against injustices; and so on.
Overall, physicians tell us they feel they have less and less control over the practice of medicine as business interests supersede patient care concerns.
Although this evolution has happened over decades, the profession reached a clear tipping point this year when the American Medical Association’s biennial private practice survey dipped below 50% for the first time since its inception nearly a decade earlier.
Medicare Patients Don’t Compare Plans | MedPage Today
More than seven in 10 Medicare beneficiaries didn’t check or compare their health plans in 2018 for changes in drug plan pricing, Medicare Advantage plan costs, or provider networks for 2019 — leaving them vulnerable to surprising price increases and reductions in the array of doctors their plans will cover.
That’s according to a new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), which also found that certain demographic groups who might benefit the most from comparison shopping were even less likely to check for changes in their plans.