By Patty Harvey and Corinne Frugoni, M.D.
San Francisco Chronicle, Letters, Dec. 16, 2024
California’s Office of Healthcare Affordability proposes to reduce health care costs by setting a 3% cap on cost growth, which, if violated by health plans and providers, will result in fines.
Such attempts at cost control only stick fingers in the dike of high costs and rampant hospital consolidation.
Fines to multibillion-dollar for-profit private companies are wrist slaps; attempts to control their profiteering cannot address finely honed, loophole acrobatics. Fines to physician practices will disrupt patient-clinician relationships.
By imposing fines, the state tacitly accepts middlemen who provide no medical care but do add to administrative complexity and waste.
Hayward’s St. Rose Hospital was saved from closure by herculean local efforts. Not all are so fortunate. According to the National Rural Health Association, 683 other rural hospitals are at risk of bankruptcy.
The misguided strategy of the state will not halt further closures.
A better solution, practiced by other industrialized democracies, is a universal, single-payer health care system, or Medicare for all, that protects hospital solvency and saves billions yearly.
Patty Harvey and Dr. Corinne Frugoni, co-chairs, Humboldt County chapters of Health Care for All-California and Physicians for a National Health Program.