The Problem With Hospital Consolidation

Hospitals Have Too Much Power Over Patients

Over the past three decades, the hospital industry has rapidly consolidated. Through a sharp uptick in hospital mergers and acquisitions, massive regional and national hospital chains have emerged—giving hospitals more power over patients and health care workers. While investors and hospital administrators have reaped lucrative profits and outsized executive compensation, however, the impact on communities has been disastrous. Hospital industry profits have reached record heights, and yet more than 230 hospitals have closed in the last 10 years. Health insurance premiums have skyrocketed, and hundreds of thousands of Americans declare bankruptcy every year due to crushing debt and the high prices of care.

Through case studies, this website highlights the many ways which hospital corporations like HCA Healthcare, Ascension Health, and Tenet Healthcare use market consolidation and anticompetitive practices to boost their bottom line while leaving patients and communities behind.

As we share information and identify necessary reforms to corporate practices, we join with patients and communities to call on federal, state, and local governments to level the playing field.

For far too long, the egregious behavior of the hospital industry has been left unchecked. Governments at all levels have an obligation to enact meaningful systemic changes to crack down on the industry’s exploitation of communities, such as enacting regulatory reforms around hospital consolidations, improving workers’ rights to form unions and bargain collectively, and establishing a universal single payer health care system in the United States.