12-04-25 Interview - Peter Pitts - How Hospitals Are Driving Up Healthcare - The Mandy Connell Podcast

HOW HOSPITALS ARE DRIVING UP HEALTHCARE COSTS The thing that makes health insurance so expensive is the COST of the healthcare being delivered, and as we try to fix health insurance we can't do so without acknowledging what is driving those costs. One bit thing is hospital consolidation. Hospitals are buying up private practices, surgical centers and more and then leveraging their monopoly powers to charge more to insurance companies, who then charge more to insurers. I've got Peter Pitts, former Associate FDA Commissioner and President of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest on at 1pm to talk about it. He recently testified before Congress and in part had this to say:

“Healthcare in the United States is in a crisis of affordability and accountability. In 2023, Americans spent more than $1.5 trillion at hospitals—nearly one-third of total health expenditures. Hospital systems, especially nonprofit institutions, are the primary driver of healthcare cost inflation and systemic inefficiency.”

If we want to lower healthcare costs, we have to fix this broken system. Peter also has a book out about the process of creative destruction and how to leverage it and you can buy it here.