Hospital mergers and health care price increases: A primer for reporters

Hospital mergers - market consolidation - can lead to health care price increases of anywhere from 3% to 65%, according to a 2022 RAND Corporation review. The FTC's director of the Bureau of Economics has said hospitals that merge may charge 40% to 50% more than if they hadn't merged.

Mergers can also result in layoffs and lower tax revenues and have a negative impact on patient care by reducing access to some health care services. With so much research confirming negative effects and as health care prices continue to rise, what - if anything - can be done to slow market consolidation and/or reduce the harms to patients and local economies?

In this webinar, New York Times reporter Reed Abelson; health care cost economist Zachary K. Goldman, Oregon Health Authority; and executive editor of The Source on Healthcare Price and Competition Katie Gudiksen, Ph.D., explored those questions and talked about what some states, like Oregon, have done to try to control cost growth.

This series builds on a recent webinarseries produced by AHCJ and Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) on the business of health care called "Follow the Money." Once journalists are trained on how to "follow the money" of health care, the Peterson-Milbank-supported webinar series will dive into cost drivers and look at solutions. Journalists will learn about ways that states, employers and other stakeholders can promote affordable health care and will be able to tell these stories in the context of their state and local communities.