Tenet Healthcare, Texas Health Resources, and Healthcare Corporation of America are all listed as members of an organization that is working against Medicare for All, as first reported in The Intercept. Most healthcare providers have been clear that Medicare at all would be untenable for hospitals because of low reimbursement rates.
The article says that Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare, which is the third-largest investor-owned operator of hospitals, has donated nearly $630,000 to the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, or PAHCF. The organization’s website says, “whether it’s called Medicare for all, buy-in, or a public option, one-size-fits-all health care will never allow us to achieve those goals.” Texas Health Resources and Healthcare Corporation of America, which runs North Texas’ Medical City facilities, are also listed as members.
The article pointed to an op-ed written by Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic governor and U.S. senator from Nebraska who now serves on Tenet’s board of directors, where he described Medicare for All as one of a series of Democratic delusions where Americans “pay more for the pleasure of increasing the role of the federal government in our lives.”
A ThinkAdvisor article reported that Tenet CEO Ronald Rittenmeyer said in a panel this month that a purely Medicare for All system wouldn’t be possible as described by many policymakers because the reimbursement rates for hospitals would be too low relative to what hospitals are paid by private health insurance.
A RAND Corporation study showed that Dallas-area hospitals are paid between 172 percent and 400 percent of what Medicare pays for the same procedures, and Dallas as a whole is one of the more expensive places to receive healthcare in the country. Some of those costs can be attributed to the massive uptick in hospital administrators and their salaries. It is also the large city with the worst health insurance rate in the country.
Medicare for all, which would squeeze hospital budgets and give everyone health insurance, has a particularly large hill to climb in Dallas, which is home to several for-profit health systems that are leading the charge against it.
Read the entire article here.
