With a focus on growing health care market concentration, the new issue of Health Affairs featured Commonwealth Fund–supported research into:
- Trends in consolidation among hospitals, physician organizations, and insurers. By 2016, 90 percent of hospital markets, 65 percent of specialist physician markets, and 57 percent of insurance markets in metropolitan areas were highly concentrated, finds Brent D. Fulton of the University of California, Berkeley.
- What increased bargaining power means for prices. Health insurers’ bargaining power appears to be strongest in markets where both insurers and providers are highly concentrated, according to Richard M. Scheffler and Daniel R. Arnold of the University of California, Berkeley.
- How premium subsidies for private Medicare plans exacerbate the impact of insurer market power. Richard G. Frank and Thomas G. McGuire report that in both Medicare Advantage and the ACA’s marketplaces, payment policy, coupled with a lack of robust plan competition, can exacerbate inefficiencies in health plan price-setting.
