Health Care ‘Retailization’ Is Coming
Comment by Don McCanne of PNHP: Yesterday, at the annual meeting of the Federation of American Hospitals, Acting CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt asked the for-profit hospitals to join CMSs ongoing push for the "retailization" of health care.
Retailization? Providers should imagine negotiating with cash paying consumers. They should strive for further price and billing transparency in health care just like in other consumer markets.
Could there be a more explicit advocacy of consumer-driven health care - placing the patient-consumer in charge of health care spending?
It fits with CMSs efforts to privatize Medicare by over-paying the private Medicare Advantage plans, with overtures to convert Medicare to a premium support (voucher) market of private plans.
Politics? This is coming from an administration headed by a Democrat - a neoliberal administration that has been mislabeled as progressive - and supported by a presidential candidate who rejects Medicare for All and wants to build on Obamacare with its high deductible private health plans that place the patient-consumer in charge.
Retailization. Watch out, here it comes!