Hospital Accountability Act
The Problem: Wisconsin Hospitals are Expensive and Cutting Critical Services
We pay some of the highest costs in the nation, and yet hospitals across the state are either closing or cutting vital services such as emergency care and birthing units, especially in rural areas and urban neighborhoods. The Wisconsin hospital system seems unstable, and yet according to a recent Rand Study Wisconsin hospitals charge the highest prices in the Midwest, and the 5th highest in the nation.
Why when Wisconsin hospitals charge so much are they creating health care deserts across the state?
The Cause: Hospital Monopoly Pricing, Over Building, and Predatory Competition
Large hospital chains have been allowed to operate as non-profits in name only. While nurses and doctors work to heal our wounds, the huge hospital chains they work for engage in dangerous cutthroat competition. They ruthlessly price-gouge consumers and use the windfall profits to expand into new markets, driving their competition (smaller hospitals) out of business and exerting monopoly control over entire regions.
The Wisconsin Legislature enabled this predatory business model in the 1980s. Acting under the influence of hospital industry lobbyists, the Legislature exempted the hospital industry from public oversight, repealing basic consumer protections. Lobbyists promised that once their industry was deregulated, hospitals would more efficiently provide high quality care at an affordable price to every community.
Instead, the hospital industry abused our trust. They built massive hospital chains focused on providing the most profitable types of medical services while neglecting services communities need most, like mental health care, substance use treatment, and primary preventive care. In their relentless drive to corner the market, hospital chains drove up healthcare costs, destabilized the medical care system, and failed to provide the services that keep people healthy.
The result of de-regulation has been the dramatic collapse in the Chippewa Valley of Sacred Heart and St. Joseph’s, which provided the bulk of necessary but “unprofitable” care, but lost out in the feeding frenzy to their larger competitors. Now the larger hospital chains refuse to fill the dangerous care gap left by their predatory competition. Another example is the three large Milwaukee hospital chains who downsized and closed urban hospitals in majority Black and Brown neighborhoods, where the health needs are the greatest, and built massive state-of-the-art suburban facilities in wealthy predominantly white suburbs where they can extract higher profits. Rural Wisconsin also continues to lose critical health care services as hospital chains search out more profitable markets.
The Solution: Hospital Accountability to the Public Good
Enough is enough. The hospital monopolies are non profits in name only and are acting like banks, fossil fuel utilities, and other for-profit highly regulated industries. It is long overdue for the hospital industry to lose its special protections and be regulated in the public interest.
Our state legislature has the power to put the guardrails back in place to lower costs for consumers and stabilize our teetering healthcare system. Until they act, our medical bills and insurance premiums will keep going up–and every community in the state risks suddenly losing critical healthcare access.
Reestablishing public control of the hospital system is a stepping stone towards our North Star of Medicare for All, where democracy makes the key decisions about the human right to health care. We are working with Senator Jeff Smith (D-Bruswick) on a Hospital Accountability Act that will include the following as first step to creating an affordable accessible health care system that works for patients:
- The restoration of Wisconsin’s Hospitality Affordability Board, recklessly repealed in the 1980s. This will return public oversight to the prices the big hospitals charge. The Board will require that hospitals provide fair prices based on the actual cost of service.
- The Fair Hospital Competition Act will ensure hospitals demonstrate the community need for any costly new medical service and capacity. This will prevent wasteful over-building, which drives up consumer costs. For example, if there is enough MRI capacity already in a region, a hospital will not be allowed to build a brand new unit just so they can drain off business from small competitors. Sharing of resources and avoiding duplication of services will lower costs for patients and even the playing field for small, community-minded hospitals.
See here for Guidance on Good Messaging and Storytelling in Health Care. For Citizen Action’s Strategy and Theory of Change see Explainers on Radical Pragmatism and Agenda Setting.
To join our healthcare organizing, contact: Kristie.Tweed@citizenactionwi.org
