Healthcare DIVE August 1, 2018
Dive Brief:
- As the healthcare industry continues to consolidate, greater regulatory scrutiny is needed to detect anticompetitive behaviors and protect consumers and employers from high prices and premiums, according to a new analysis by The Commonwealth Fund.
- To show how market concentration varies across the U.S., the researchers looked at concentration of providers and payers for each metropolitan statistical area in 2016. Markets were classified as unconcentrated, moderately concentrated, highly concentrated or super concentrated.
- For providers, 47.1% of MSAs were highly concentrated and 43% were super concentrated. By contrast, 54.5% of MSAs had highly concentrated insurance markets, while 36.9% were moderately concentrated.
Overall, provider...