Thread by @AlecMacGillis

Such an important piece here by @RosenthalHealth: it's not just pharma and insurance companies, our favorite bogeymen, driving up the cost of health care. It's hospitals. nytimes.com/2019/09/01/opi…

@RosenthalHealth "A report this year from researchers at Yale and other universities found that hospital prices increased a whopping 42 percent from 2007 to 2014 for inpatient care and 25 percent for outpatient care."

@RosenthalHealth This is key: "Every senator, virtually every congressman and every mayor of every large city has a powerful hospital system in his or her district. And those hospitals are as politically untouchable as soybean growers in Iowa or oil producers in Texas...."

@RosenthalHealth "As hospitals and hospital systems have consolidated, they have become the biggest employers in numerous cities and states. They have replaced manufacturing as the hometown industry in a number of rust-belt cities, including Cleveland and Pittsburgh..."

@RosenthalHealth "...Can Kamala Harris ignore the requests of Sutter Health, Kaiser Permanente, U.C.L.A. or any of the big health care systems in California? Can Elizabeth Warren ignore the needs of Partners HealthCare, Boston’s behemoth?"

@RosenthalHealth "While on paper many hospitals operate on the thinnest of margins, that is in part a choice, resulting from extravagance.
When their operations generate huge surpluses...they build another cancer clinic, increase CEO pay, buy the newest scanner, or install spas and Zen gardens."