How ObamaCare is Hurting Cancer Patients
Scott Gottlieb writing in the Wall Street Journal:
[E]ligible hospitals are buying private oncology practices so they can book more of the expensive cancer drug purchases at the discount rates. More than 400 oncology practices have been acquired by hospitals since ObamaCare passed. Acquiring a single oncologist and moving the doctor’s drug prescriptions under a hospital’s 340B program can generate an additional profit of more than $1 million for a hospital.
Because the overhead for a hospital is higher than for a doctor’s office, a patient treated in a hospital clinic incurs $6,500 more in costs than the same person treated in a private medical office, according to data from the Community Oncology Alliance. Patients who get chemotherapy at a hospital also face an additional $650 in co-pays and other out-of-pocket expenses.
Congress needs to clamp down on this abusive practice fast! There’s nothing wrong with doctors wanting to work for hospitals. But if the only reason hospitals want to employ doctors is because they have boost fees, taxpayers will be the losers.
Definitely, they’ve created perverse incentives and this is the result.
It seems to me that they are just trying to make a profit…
Yeah it seems as if people have forgot that a hospital is a business…as much as we’d like to think that doctors are just out there to help people with no monetary interests at all, that’s not the case.
Unless it’s a true non-for-profit hospital.
As long as they aren’t scamming the taxpayers, I have no problem with it.
Optimizing for profit is a significant force.
One that benefits society if it is done in the free market.
“eligible hospitals are allowed to buy drugs from drug companies at forced discounts of 25% to 50%. The hospitals can then bill government and private insurers for the full cost of the drugs, pocketing the spread.”
Man, that’s stupid
It’s greed.
The system sickens me.