John C. Lucio
Jefferson City
Dear Editor:
I have practiced medicine in this community for over 22 years, in addition to having served as SSM’s vice president of medical affairs for 10 years.
I have an interesting financial metric regarding the ongoing ongoing debate regarding MU-SSM hospital Jefferson City/Mexico purchase. Many of the opponents of the deal have raised appropriate questions regarding the potential monopoly this might create.
Monopolies are interesting in that most businesses privately want them, but deny this when asked publicly. When it happens in a community special interest “coalitions” are organized to challenge the proposed change. We are seeing this now. Many opponents of the deal have cited academic reports concluding that mergers will probably raise the price of health care, assuming past behavior will predict the future. First of all, I can tell you that personally my health care premiums have always gone up in the past 22 years I have practiced here, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that trend continued. This is due to the market power of the insurance companies.
A report that came out Jan. 4, 2019, looked at the hospital adjusted expenses per inpatient day across the U.S. So this is the cost on average that is created per day when one stays at the hospital. This report was created by the Kaiser Family Foundation (no relation to the SSM President Laura Kaiser). The data was extracted from the 2016 American Hospital Association Annual survey.
For Missouri the costs looked like this:
For state/local government hospitals like MU the cost was — $1,681.00 per day.
For nonprofit hospitals like Capital Regional and St Mary’s — $2,426 per day. A 44.3 percent increase over state hospitals.
For-profit hospitals —$2,024 per day. A 20.4 percent increase over state hospitals.
Of course every statistic and study has it flaws. But I wouldn’t be too quick to dismiss the MU purchase based on the monopoly argument alone.