While everyone I know has someone close to them who has experienced out-of-control health care costs, it feels like Mainers have it worse, as our costs are increasing faster and we are driving farther for affordable care.

What’s driving this? Hospital consolidation.

When hospitals consolidate, patients inevitably suffer to benefit hospitals’ bottom lines. These large hospital systems are far more powerful when they consolidate, providing them disproportionate power to dictate prices across the market through anti-consumer contracts, such as anti-tiering and anti-steering contracts.

When hospital systems become as large as those we have in Maine, they can force health plans to sign these anti-competitive contracts, which prevent health plans from building provider networks driven by value, or prohibiting the use of cost-sharing incentives to encourage patients to use higher-value providers.

By virtue of their market dominance, hospitals are allowed to dictate where patients receive care, thereby limiting competitive options. Not only that, because of the lack of transparency in hospital prices, patients end up being in the dark about why their bills are increasing.

Maine’s Legislature must address the hospital consolidations and anti-competitive contracts hurting over 1.3 million Mainers who call this state home. We need greater transparency in hospital bills, greater competition in the health care market and fewer facility fees. A good first start is L.D. 1533, An Act to Provide Consistent Billing Practices by Health Care Providers, and I urge the Legislature to pass this legislation.

Leslie Lacroix
West Gardiner

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