It is both comical and infuriating to watch how key healthcare stakeholders react to two different, but highly inter-related subjects: 1) Medicare For All, and 2) Who is at fault for outrageous medical prices. Stakeholders in healthcare include hospital systems, provider groups, health insurance companies and pharmaceutical and device manufacturers. Employers are another major stakeholder, but much too often, they are largely excluded when it comes to contractual relationships between many of the aforementioned players.

When many of these stakeholders are asked who is at fault for charging high prices for medical services, each will conveniently step into a circle and point fingers at one another, as if they are participating in a circular firing squad. It seems that someone else is always at fault, but never the accused.

However, when asked about the growing ‘Medicare For All‘ proposals, commonly believed to eliminate private insurance and ‘socialize medicine,’ many of these same stakeholders will quickly hold hands in support of something centrally sacred to their collective well-being, as if they are military comrades in the HBO mini-series, “Band of Brothers.” These stakeholders’ words and actions are quite transparent about protecting their own self-seeking interests.

Below are just a few examples of this love-hate relationship between various healthcare stakeholders.

Medicare For All

Former Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, was quoted as saying, “We need a common enemy to unite us.”  For stakeholders who are frequently at odds with each other, such as medical providers are with insurance companies when it comes to contractual reimbursement arrangements, the relationships can be confrontational, if not outright brutal. However, for various reasons, both typically view Medicare For All as a major threat to their profitable well-being, if not survival. Given what is at stake with a ‘Single-Payer’ system that presumably would be controlled by federal bureaucrats, providers and insurers have found this ‘common enemy’ to mask their mutual differences with each other.

On April 16, UnitedHealth Group CEO David Wichmann warned Democrats that Medicare For All would destabilize the nation’s healthcare system. As mentioned in The Hill, Medicare For All would be a “wholesale disruption of American healthcare [that] would surely jeopardize the relationship people have with their doctors, destabilize the nation’s health system, and limit the ability of clinicians to practice medicine at their best.”

Insurance companies are greatly threatened by the many proposals initiated by progressive Democrats to expand Medicare to the entire U.S. population, most likely greatly reducing the role of private insurers. It must be noted, however, even with any given Medicare For All program implemented, private insurers would most likely be chosen as subcontractors to administer the program, but the profit motive would be greatly reduced from today’s standards.

Not to be outdone, a major counterpart to private insurers, the American Hospital Association (AHA), have similar views to Wichmann’s. AHA President Rick Pollack wrote in February that Medicare For All proposals “could do more harm than good to patient care.” Additionally, this one-size-fits-all approach could disrupt coverage of 180 million Americans who are currently covered by employer plans, and that physicians and other providers “may limit the number of Medicare or Medicaid patients they see because of chronic government underpayment.”

When lobbyists from both stakeholders were recently on stage together in Nashville addressing the Medicare For All topic, such as Matt Eyles (CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP)) and Chip Kahn (CEO of the Federation for American Hospitals), one could almost detect John Lennon’s epic song, “Give Peace A Chance” in the background. Kahn discussed a new organization that he formed, Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, and its purpose of ‘counter-messaging’ against the Medicare For All movement. Eyles acknowledged that AHIP was one of the first groups to become part of this new organization.

Healthcare Prices – Who is at Fault?

The camaraderie found in Medicare For All quickly vanishes when stakeholders are simply asked why healthcare prices are so high. This healthcare ‘hot potato’ can quickly determine just how deep-seated relationships are (or not) between major industry players. The April 15 cover of Modern Healthcare appropriately illustrates fingers pointing at each other, deflecting the price question and placing the blame elsewhere. Additionally, when leaders from Pharmacy Benefit Managers and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) have appeared in front of the Senate Finance Committee during the past few months to justify their pricing methods, both pointed fingers at one another (insurers also), making sure that their respective organizations and industry were not to blame.

Deflecting responsibility and other self-preservation behaviors will only add to the desire to seek alternative solutions that can reform a grossly underperforming and bloated healthcare system. Stakeholder organizations and industries must decide whether they want to be part of the solution – or, at their own peril – continue to pursue their ‘business-as-usual’ behavior that benefits no one – but themselves.

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