AMA FInds Hard Proof for Collective Bargaining Bill
At a November news briefing in Washington, D.C, The American Medical Association released a study on the rising number of company mergers in Health Care Providers. This study concluded what physicians and patients have long experienced. In recent years: only a few health care providers monopolize the local coverage, placing more and more barriers between patients and good medical care.
Increasingly, physicians are being pressured into poor contracts. The study was conducted on 40 metropolitan areas for which complete data were available. Of these 40, 19 proved to be highly concentrated health insurance markets, with at least one insurer holding 30% or more of the HMO/PPO market share. In 7 of these 19, one insurer obtained more than 40%, another 3 of these19, one insurer obtained more than 50% and 4 of the 19, one insurer held more than 70% of the market share. Since 1995, there have been 321 announced health plan mergers and acquisitions.
Last year, Tom Campbell (R. California) sponsored a bill for collective bargaining which would level the playing field for independent physicians toward dominating insurers, but the bill died in the Senate for lack of a senate sponsor. The AMA, with its newly obtained data, is working with congress to develop a modified version of the Campbell bill and has requested a meeting with the FTC and Justice Department to discuss the report’s findings. Although Dr Donald J. Palmisano, secretary-treasurer of the AMA Board of Trustees, declined commenting on details of the newly revised plan, he did state that during the past several years, the government has been too lax in its oversight of the plan mergers. He claimed that consolidation of the marketplace has gone virtually unchecked.
Susan Pisano, spokeswoman for the American Association of Health Plans responded, stating that this AMA action against Health Plan dominance and for anti-trust relief is an anti-consumer act. She claims this bill would drive up reimbursement rates "at a time when health care costs are exploding, unemployment is rising, and there is great economic uncertainty." A number of physician groups, like the AMA, have found the data produced by this study useful in securing anti-trust relief. Dr Robert L. Weinmann, President of the Union of American Physicians and Dentists stated: "It exposes the venal conduct of the insurance companies and also probably illegal antitrust activity deserving of full hearings by Congress."