Gregg Margolis’s three reading choices about health policy this week

Gregg Margolis, Director of Health Policy Fellowships and Leadership Programs at the National Academy of Medicine, shared on LinkedIn:

“If you can only read three things about health policy this week, I suggest…

The Hill: Britt: High Maternal Mortality Rate ‘American Issue,’ Not Democrat Or Republican Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) encouraged elected officials to work across the aisle in tackling the United States’s high maternal mortality rate during a panel discussion Thursday on maternal mental health. ‘I think it is so important that we continue to talk about this in a bipartisan way because this is not a Democrat or Republican issue, this is an American issue,’ said Britt during The Hill’s Moms Matter: Closing the Maternal Mental Health Gap event, which was sponsored by Sage Therapeutics. (O’Connell-Domenech, 5/16)

The Wall Street Journal: Surging Hospital Prices Are Helping Keep Inflation High One reason U.S. inflation is still high: Increases in prices for procedures to prop open clogged arteries, provide intensive care for newborns and biopsy breasts. Hospitals didn’t raise prices as early in the pandemic as supermarkets, retailers and restaurants. But they have been making up ground since then. Their increases have contributed to stubbornly high inflation readings from the consumer-price index, which in April increased 3.4% from a year ago. (Evans, 5/16)

Modern Healthcare: Hospitals Charged Private Insurers 254% Of Medicare In 2022: Rand Hospital-negotiated prices rose from 2020 to 2022, especially among dominant facilities in their respective markets, a new report shows. Commercial insurers’ payments to hospitals amounted to, on average, 254% of Medicare rates in 2022, up from 243% in 2021 and 241% in 2020, according to data from Rand, a nonprofit research firm. Rand researchers used claims data from more than 4,000 hospitals in 49 states and Washington, D.C. (Kacik, 5/12)

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Source: Gregg Margolis/LinkedIn