Monday, December 18, 2017

Medical mergers in Minnesota are on the rise - StarTribune.com

Medical mergers in Minnesota are on the rise - StarTribune.com

Comment from Kip Sullivan:

 "The reporter, Chris Snowbeck, warned me he wouldn't draw any conclusions
in the article and that I would probably be a tad annoyed by that. He
was right. I'm a bit bothered by the fact that it gives both sides of a
debate the opportunity to comment, but it doesn't help the reader
understand which side the evidence supports.


But on the whole
I'm glad Chris was interested enough to write this article and to talk
to me about it. It appears in the Sunday edition (the most read edition)
of the state's largest newspaper, and it discusses one of the most
important issues in health policy today. This issue is rarely discussed
in the mainstream media with any thoroughness. Chris got the main issues
out front and center.

The best feature of the article is that it
clearly states that mergers raise costs and, slightly less clearly,
that merger madness is a response to the "value-based purchasing" fads
endorsed first by the ACA in 2010 and then by MACRA in 2015. Where the
article gets unnecessarily agnostic is on the  question of whether the
higher costs are worth the allegedly improved "value.""

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