AHA blog: Hospital price growth remains in check, despite efforts to cherry-pick data to create a false narrative

Sep 17, 2020 - 02:50 PM
CMS-non-emergency-ambulance

In a new AHA blog, Aaron Wesolowski, AHA’s vice president of policy research, analytics and strategy, sets the record straight about false narratives portraying hospitals and health systems as uniquely responsible for increased health care prices, and using these narratives in attempts to deny hospitals and health systems the financial relief they desperately need. According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, price growth for hospital care services was just 2.4% in 2018. In fact, even when excluding the artificially low rates paid to hospitals by Medicare and Medicaid, annual price growth has still been below 3% in recent years according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Any suggestion that more resources should get pulled from hospitals and health systems right now — during a global pandemic — is beyond reckless,” writes Wesolowski. “Doing so would endanger patients and threaten access to care for communities across America." 

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