423
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

Ballad Health, a 20-hospital system in the Tri-Cities region of Tennessee and Virginia, benefits from the largest state-sanctioned hospital monopoly in the United States. In the six years since lawmakers in both states waived anti-monopoly laws and Ballad was formed, ER visits for patients sick enough to be hospitalized grew more than three times as long and now far exceed the criteria set by state officials, according to Ballad reports released by the Tennessee Department of Health.

Tennessee and Virginia have so far announced no steps to reduce time spent in Ballad ERs. The Tennessee health department, which has a more direct role in regulating Ballad, has each year issued a report saying the agreement that gave Ballad a monopoly “continues to provide a Public Advantage.” Department officials have twice declined to comment to KFF Health News on Ballad’s performance.

According to Ballad’s latest annual report, which was released this month and spans from July 2022 to June 2023, the median time that patients spend in Ballad ERs before being admitted to the hospital is nearly 11 hours. This statistic includes both time spent waiting and time being treated in the ER and excludes patients who weren’t admitted or left the ER without receiving care.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] force@lemmy.world 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

A "free market" is an idealist concept for something that can not exist in the real world under capitalism. In a system where resources are distributed based on capital, and resources themselves are capital, oligopolies and monopolies are logically inevitable and the market is never a level playing field.

The reality is that many goods and services have poor elasticity or are inelastic. A "free market" completely falls apart when it meets such variables. This includes healthcare – there is no economic incentive for the owning class to keep prices as low as possible, as people need healthcare and many times people will die without it. The way to make the most profit in that situation is for businesses in an area to simply make prices as high as legally possible and bury patients in debt, or for businesses to collaborate on price, etc.

This is doubly true when considering that people often don't have a choice as to where they go to receive healthcare in many scenarios, there is no "just go to a different hospital" or "just get an ambulance from a different provider" or even "stop going to the only doctor in your area and instead drive 2 hours away whenever you want to go see one, and you have to have a car to do that". So even in the completely unrealistic fake scenario that healthcare providers would otherwise have an incentive to "compete" on lowering price, this fact alone almost completely topples that. There is little to no choice a majority of the time.

People like to think of a "free market" but in real life the most profitable thing to do often times isn't a good outcome for consumers. Just look how fucked up privatized rail caused transport in the US to be. And look at the healthcare system... which has sucked ever since it was a market. And look at the parking meters in Chicago. The complete and utter failure of those systems isn't caused by "we regulate it too much". Public services becoming private just causes them to become anti-consumer.

This isn't healthcare-exclusive, but healthcare is so important and the system is so abusable that it must be owned by the public for society to be functional. A system where basic necessities aren't commoditized is the only solution to make sure people have free access to basic necessities.

Also you fail to consider that monopolies and oligopolies come from somewhere. That somewhere is the "free market". They didn't just spontaneously pop into existence because of big government or whatever, they came into existence because of the lack of regulation and still exist because of there being extremely poor regulation. It is just a fact of the capitalist free market that people with more capital than others have the capacity to gain more capital, and people with less capital are prone to lose capital. There is no system that isn't heavily regulated that consistently prevents a minority of entities in a market from accumulating a majority of resources over time. Corporatism emerges from free markets, and there is no solution short of extreme regulation for the problem (although the ideal solution is to just publicize all necessities and services important to the general population outright)

this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
423 points (99.5% liked)

News

23296 readers
3364 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS