Policy experts call for a two-pronged strategy to hospital regulation: applying rate caps to out-of-network hospitals, and establishing flexible, all-payer hospital budgets that adjust to shifts in patient volumes.
The headline might seem a contradiction to some: "How Price Regulation is Needed to Advance Market Competition."
Free-market gospel is that government regulations tend to hamper competition, but a recent policy insight report published in Health Affairs made the case that years of freewheeling mergers and acquisitions in the hospital industry has not resulted in lower prices—on the contrary, prices have continued to rise despite expectations of higher efficiency among providers.
Complete your profile to continue reading and get FREE access to BenefitsPRO, part of your ALM digital membership.
Your access to unlimited BenefitsPRO content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:
- Breaking benefits news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical converage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
Already have an account? Sign In Now
© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
