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As mentioned in a recent post, Save Our States is expanding to take on a few new issues. One is healthcare—which I’ve wanted to do ever since starting out in public policy. Why? Frankly, because there are so many foolish and destructive policies that need to be exposed and corrected. 

A recent Daily Caller article explained one of these poor policy choices, which hurts small, independent medical practices. As the authors explain:

Medicare routinely pays hospitals two to three times more than independent clinics for the same outpatient procedures. That “hospital markup” is nothing short of a hidden subsidy, fueling a corporate buying spree as hospitals scoop up local physician practices just to bill Medicare at inflated rates.

This is not the only government policy that favors big hospitals, showering them with taxpayer funds that help them buy up other practices. But it’s an obvious one, that Congress or the Administration ought to fix.

The trouble is hospital administrators and their lobbyists. They routinely claim that treating them the same as other providers would deprive Americans of access to care. This is false, but scary enough that it can paralyze the policy process.

I’m old enough to remember when most of the doctors we visited were independent. They ran their own practices, knew their patients, and were fixtures in the community. When we called a doctor’s office, a person answered the phone. All this made for more personalized, accountable, and caring medicine. And it’s almost all gone—not because patients and doctors want it that way, but because big government policies create overwhelming incentives favoring consolidation.