The complexity, opaqueness, arbitrariness, and conflicts of interest of government healthcare, as exemplified by Medicare, make it rife for several kinds of inefficiency and fraud. The passages quoted below, document one kind.
(p. B4) Hospitals are adding billions of dollars in facility fees to medical bills for routine care in outpatient centers they own. Once an annoyance, the fees are now pervasive, and in some places they are becoming nearly impossible to avoid, data compiled for The Wall Street Journal show. The fees are spreading as hospitals press on with acquisitions, snapping up medical groups and tacking on the additional charges.
The fees raise prices by hundreds of dollars for widely used and standard medical care, including colonoscopies, mammograms and heart screening.
The added cost isn’t justified, physicians and economists say. Medicare advisers said last year the federal insurer likely overpaid for a sample of services by about $6 billion because of the fees in 2021.
. . .
The fees show up on patients’ bills after hospitals snap up clinics and doctors. Hospitals can designate the newly acquired clinics as an extension of their operations, forcing patients to pay the fees to cover costs for the entire hospital.
Fees have grown more pervasive as hospitals have gone on an acquisition tear in recent years, chasing after patients who have more options to get medical care somewhere else. Many hospital systems now get at least half their revenue from patients who aren’t admitted. By one estimate, more than half of doctors work for hospitals.
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(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 25, 2024, and has the title “Hospitals Are Adding Billions in ‘Facility’ Fees for Routine Care.”)