Washington, D.C. - Today, Congressman Michael Burgess, M.D. (R-TX), Chairman of the Budget Committee Health Care Taskforce, joined the House Budget Committee hearing on “Breaking Up Health Care Monopolies: Examining the Budgetary Effects of Health Care Consolidation.”

During the hearing, Congressman Burgess highlighted the Democrats’ one size-fits-all approach to health care has had detrimental effects on consolidation in U.S. health care markets leading to the increase of federal health care spending and high costs for patients.

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Congressman Burgess began his questioning by asking Dr. Adam Burggeman on allowing physician ownership in rural areas to increase competition and lower costs for patients.

“Based on your experience working as a practicing orthopedic surgeon, what drives independent physicians to close their practices and turn to larger health systems and hospitals for employment?” asked Congressman Burgess.

“It’s like any other business. Any business, you have to balance the income and the expenses. When your income is constantly going down and your expenses constantly going up, and you went into medicine to take care of patients, not to do with the administrative burdens, people just give up. They say, “I’m going to give up autonomy, give up control of my practice, to let somebody else worry about the balance sheet. Let somebody else worry about all of these administrative burdens, cause I just want to get back to taking care of my patients,” said Dr. Adam Burggeman.

“How important is the concept of physician ownership and physician- led organizations in the health care space. How important is that in being a counterweight to forced consolidation?” asked Congressman Burgess.

“Obviously, physicians when they start, we take this famous hippocratic oath and are willing to do good for our communities and patients. The critical piece is that physicians need to lead health care. The fact that at some point and time we made a decision, probably the most important thing we can own is the hospitals that we practice in, and we shut that off so that they no longer can own them going forward. If they want to expand, they can expand and compete. We talked about consolidation. If you’re able to knock out all of your competitors and not let physicians build hospitals, not let physicians expand hospitals. What’s going to happen? We’re going to see more consolidation in the hospital market, which will drive up costs. We know from all the data, physician owned hospitals provide at least, if not, better quality of care and they do it at a lower cost. It just makes sense to get rid of that ban,” said Dr. Burggeman.

Congressman Burgess concluded his questioning by asking Mr. Chapin White, CBO, on why the Congressional Budget Office fails to recognize that more consolidation leads to greater health care prices:

“Why hasn’t CBO recognized what Dr. Burgemman just said?” asked Congressman Burgess.

“Physician owned hospitals, we recognize there is potentially a priced competition with competent hospitals. At the same time if physician owned hospitals are allowed to open new facilities or expand existing facilities, we expect that will increase utilization. In a sense that’s the flip side of the axis,” said Dr. Chapin White.

“Let me just stop you there, you expect, but can you provide us the data. Can you provide us the models that you’ve used to make those assumptions. Because I think they are fundamentally wrong. I will be happy to debate that with facts, but not on ‘what we expect to happen’. I’d like to see actual numbers on that,” said Congressman Burgess.


Background:
According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, total health care spending in the United States totaled over $4.5 trillion in 2022, 17.3% of gross domestic product or $13,493 per person.

Consolidation across the health care system increases costs by increasing market power and allowing for entities to increase prices and the volume of services and products delivered.

The House Budget Committee is advancing common sense policies to empower free market competition and lower costs for both taxpayers and patients.

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