Increasingly Consolidated Markets May Hurt Consumers, Studies Show
Consolidation in commercial health insurance markets is not slowing down, according to the 2019 edition of an annual report from the American Medical Association, which found that the share of markets that are highly concentrated increased from 71% to 75% between 2014 and 2018. The report concludes that such market consolidation is harming consumers and providers of care. Another recent study, this one concerning the effect of provider consolidation on care quality, found that newly acquired hospitals did not see any improvement in readmission or mortality rates, but they did see slightly worse performance on patient-experience measures.
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