No doubt this is a hot topic for all of our members, with varying opinions throughout the community. The White House has announced an organized initiative here to “support competition in health care and support lowering prescription drug costs.” The specific areas of focus include:
- Making taxpayer-funded drugs more affordable
- Looking at “corporate greed” in health care
- Joint investigation by DOJ, FTC, HHS
- Investigating anticompetitive “roll ups”
- Increasing ownership transparency in health care
- Banning noncompete agreements in health care
- “Supporting independent doctors” related to payment models
- And others
What does all of this mean?
There are many opinions on all sides of the private equity and health care financing discussions. Many members of our community are involved in these discussions. The first thing to realize is that nothing happens particularly fast in this type of review. A few of these initiatives are in progress, some require leaders yet to be identified.
What should you do?
First pay attention. There will be lots of discussion in the emergency medicine community and other parts of industry. EMcentric will follow this issue, including posting official announcements regarding government policies and opportunities to comment during public comment periods. This is a very good but little used method to influence public policy. Watch this space.
Responses
https://open.substack.com/pub/emworkforce/p/em-employer-debt-matters-when-the?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Good recent article on how much debt, the CMG are carrying when own by private equity.