Feature in Media

The Petris Center’s newly-released report “Consolidation in California’s Health Care Market 2010-2016: Impact on Prices and ACA Premiums” was featured this morning in Politico Pulse, a daily health care and health policy briefing from Politico read widely across the industry.

You can read the Politico Pulse write-up of our report here.

You can read the full Petris Center report here, and can listen to the audio of the press conference with Attorney General Becerra and Dr. Scheffler announcing the report here.

Sacramento’s Capital Public Radio published an article today about the Petris Center’s new report on consolidation in California’s health care markets and its potential to have broader political effects. The article discusses how health care consolidation — identified in part by the new Petris Center report — and the effect of the consolidation on prices and premiums have caught the eye of California elected officials, ranging from the state legislature to the California Attorney General’s office. The article concludes with a quote from Petris Center Director Dr. Richard Scheffler on the potential cost savings that addressing consolidation would bring.

You can read the Capital Public Radio article here.

You can read the newly released Petris Center report “Consolidation in California’s Health Care Market 2010-2016: Impact on Prices and ACA Premiums” here. You can also listen to the audio of the press conference with California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Dr. Scheffler, announcing the release of the report, here.

Today, the San Francisco Chronicle published an article covering a newly released Petris Center report on consolidation in California’s health care markets. The article, entitled “Healthcare costs 30% more in Northern than in Southern California”, discusses the report’s key finding that people living in areas where there is greater consolidation among hospitals, physician groups and insurance companies pay more for health care. In particular, the article focuses on the report’s finding that “prices for medical procedures are 20 to 30 percent higher in Northern California than in Southern California — even after adjusting for the Bay Area’s higher cost of living and wages.”

You can read the full San Francisco Chronicle article here.

You can read the newly released Petris Center report “Consolidation in California’s Health Care Market 2010-2016: Impact on Prices and ACA Premiums” here. You can also listen to the audio of the press conference with California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, announcing the release of the report, here.

Petris Center Director Dr. Richard Scheffler was quoted in the article “Drug industry lawsuit shows it wants to keep patients in dark on pricing”, published today in the Los Angeles Times. The article covers Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America’s lawsuit seeking to derail a SB 17, a new California law that will require 60 days’ notice before drugmakers raise prices beyond a certain threshold once it goes into effect on January 1, 2018. In the article, Dr. Scheffler discusses the pharmaceutical industry’s motivation for the lawsuit and future actions they may take.

You can read the full article, part of David Lazarus’ Consumer Confidential column, here.

On Sunday, Dr. Scheffler’s letter to the editor was published in the New York Times Magazine. The letter was a response to the article “The Kids Who Can’t: Why Are More American Teenagers Than Ever Suffering From Severe Anxiety?”, and discusses the skyrocketing rates on Anxiety Disorder on college campuses. As rates of anxiety disorder have nearly doubled for 18-20 year old college students between 2008-2015, the letter calls for universities to improve the environments they are creating for their students.

Dr. Scheffler is currently the Principle Investigator for the study “Freaked out Millennials: The Causes and Consequences of Anxiety Disorder”, funded by the Berkeley Institute for the Future of Young Americans.

You can read the full letter here and can learn more about the “Freaked Out Millennials” study here.

Dr. Scheffler and Dr. Arnold have a new op-ed published in the Philadelphia Inquirer and on Philly.com: “Corporations should act as their own insurance companies in our broken healthcare market.” The op-ed discusses the findings of their recent Health Affairs paper, “Insurer Market Power Lowers Prices In Numerous Concentrated Provider Markets” and specifically looks at private sector solutions to market concentration.

The op-ed discusses how increasing market concentration across the hospital, physician, and insurance sectors has resulted in higher prices for consumers – and also increased market power for insurers. When insurers’ markets became more concentrated, they were able to bargain down these price increases by about half – however, there is little evidence that the benefits of reduced prices are passed on to consumers. One approach to dealing with this market concentration is governmental intervention with anti-trust actions. However, Scheffler and Arnold discuss another  recent approach to reducing health-care costs: leaving insurance companies out and negotiating directly with hospitals and doctors. The op-ed discusses how companies such as Intel, Boeing, Walmart, Lowe’s, and Oracle, as well as the governments of San Francisco and Wisconsin are taking these steps, and the benefits and risks of taking such actions.