sade082

During the course of the past ten years many smaller hospitals have either closed their doors or merged with larger hospitals. There are various reasons for this, but I think one of the main reasons is  corporate cronyism . It's always existed to a certain degree, but it has been put on steroids since during the Obama administration. This is not a criticism of Obama, it's just an observation. Okay, so money has always played a significant role in politics. You will always have corporations that make a lot of money, everybody always wants more (I don't care who you are) and the lure of making more money is always seductive.  Now, I don't have a problem with corporations making lots of money, and I never will.  I believe there is plenty of money to go around, enough so that every person, every corporation, in the world could be rich if they made the effort; if they sacrificed their time, and took the risks.  I mean, that's what American Exceptionalism is all about....

So large hospital groups have succeeded in beating out the competition by supporting big government, which in turn creates laws that create regulations that smaller hospitals cannot afford. This, in turn, causes their competitors to either close their doors, or they have no choice but to merge with the larger groups. This, in turn, has resulted in higher healthcare costs. This is contrary to the promise that healthcare costs would go down under Obamacare. Yet Obamacare has made it easier to merge, and easier to charge high prices. In fact, Obamacare almost encourages it through incentives. Check out here some quotes from Forbes.com. This has had a great impact on the healthcare industry.  This is how larger hospitals have beat out their competition -- gobbled up the competition -- without even having a better product, or regardless of having a better product. Here's a quote from Forbes: The average day spent in a U.S. hospital costs five times as much as it does in other industrial...