According to a PHA news release, the associations “have bargained for the destruction of physician owned hospitals as a quid pro quo for the Medicare cost savings.”
While the PHA supports reducing the cost of healthcare, the association is calling this measure “a desperate move aimed at reducing competition, garnering control of the entire industry and eliminating patient choice.” No details of the proposed ban have been released, but the language used against physician ownership is supposedly similar to that included in SCHIP and the draft of the House health reform package, according to the release.
PHA indicates that there are 220 physician-owned hospitals in the United States, and, on average, more than 40 percent of their patients are Medicare beneficiaries. By the year 2010, physician hospitals will employ more than 70,000 Americans, and on average, each physician-owned hospital pays $2.6 million annually in taxes.
Molly Sandvig, executive director of the PHA, says in the release, “It is time that the hospital associations give more than lip service to issues such as access, quality care, efficiency and patient choice. If the facts are truly considered, physician hospitals will be welcome, and the hospital associations’ deal will be seen for what it really is, a ploy to reduce healthy competition in healthcare.”
To read the PHA’s news release, click here (pdf).
Learn more about the Physician Hospitals of America.
