Making Health Care Markets Work Better
<p>Over the past several years, mergers and consolidations in the health care industry have become more common, prompting concerns about threats to competition in health care markets. Just yesterday, a federal judge blocked the $37 billion merger between health insurers Aetna Inc. and Humana Inc. for this reason.</p><p>In a new <em>To the Point</em> post, health policy analyst Stuart Guterman says that while antitrust actions to promote competition are important, they are not enough to control health care costs and ensure quality. </p>
<p>To enable market forces to work properly, Guterman says, we need to address flaws in health care markets. “Although it may run counter to the emphasis on deregulation in the current political climate, well-chosen regulation may be necessary to make markets work better and to avoid the need for more—and more onerous—regulations to counter the adverse results produced by a broken health care market structure,” he says.</p>