Comments on: Anthem partners with mountain hospitals to drive rates down 8 percent http://healthnewscolorado.org/2014/09/11/anthem-partners-with-mountain-hospitals-to-drive-rates-down-8-percent/ Colorado Health News and Opinion Sat, 20 Dec 2014 02:36:36 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.0.1 By: thephotoguy http://healthnewscolorado.org/2014/09/11/anthem-partners-with-mountain-hospitals-to-drive-rates-down-8-percent/#comment-19632 Fri, 12 Sep 2014 16:25:56 +0000 http://healthnewscolorado.org/?p=15753#comment-19632 “‘When there’s not a lot of competition, costs naturally are driven up. It’s the economics of scale, if you will,’ Wittstruck said.” My take, as a health care service consumer and not a provider, is that Ms. Wittstruck’s statement is only part of the story. More than economies of scale, what this pattern of higher costs in areas with less competitioin suggests to me is that the costs of health care are being driven by the private sector, and underlying that, the necessity (in the current abhorrent system) of earning a profit. Variation – sometimes huge variation – in the cost to the patient of the same procedure, depending upon where that health care is delivered, has little to do with the procedure itself, and much more to do with corporate balance sheets.

Anthem’s move helps, a little, but it doesn’t eliminate the perniciousness of the profit motive in Colorado’s health care system.

]]>