House Republicans during a Tuesday hearing blamed hospital and health systems for high health costs, excoriating a group of CEOs for exorbitant benefits packages, large profit margins and mergers.
“Our communities are better off with hospitals in them, but large health systems have taken advantage of that reality,” Ways and Means Committee chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) said. “Simply put, hospitals are charging an insane amount for care.”
Hospitals are one of the primary drivers of increased health spending, accounting for about 31 percent of all health care costs, according to the most recent federal data. Smith noted that hospital prices have skyrocketed 300 percent in just over two decades.
“When hospitals have no competition, it’s no wonder that the sky seems to be the limit for prices,” Smith said.
Smith even floated the idea of site-neutral payment policy, which would cut hospital outpatient Medicare payments to the same level as a doctor’s office.
Previous site-neutral legislation has been bipartisan, but hospitals argued it would cost them billions of dollars and fought tooth and nail to kill the proposals.
The hearing featured the CEOs of HCA Healthcare, the largest for-profit health system in the country; CommonSpirit Health, the largest Catholic hospital chain; New York-Presbyterian, one of the wealthiest health systems; and ECU Health, a large rural system in North Carolina.
It was the latest in a series of GOP-led hearings pressuring different representatives of the health care system over high prices. Lawmakers earlier this year grilled executives from insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry, who pointed fingers at hospitals.
The hearings show Republicans are acutely aware that affordability is a top issue among voters ahead of the midterm elections and are willing to show they are holding accountable the corporations and executives they were once allied with.
Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) asked the chief executive of HCA Healthcare “why we should allow for-profit systems to exist.”
Murphy, a practicing urologist and co-chair of the GOP Doctors’ Caucus, said he understands costs have gone up, and there is uncompensated care.
But he noted executive compensation has also risen, and there’s no excuse for companies making exorbitant profits for shareholders who have no connection to health care.
“I don’t want to sound like a communist; I’m not. I’m a capitalist at heart,” Murphy added. “But if we now have institutions that put profits above patients … we have to rethink this model.”
Democrats though, cast the hearing as a Republican attempt to deflect from the massive Medicaid cuts that paid for last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill.
“Families won’t be fooled so easily. They know Republicans are desperate to distract from their record of failure,” said Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), the panel’s ranking member.
“They ripped coverage from more than 15 million people and pushed hundreds of hospitals to the brink — and now they want credit as states scramble for scraps from their Ugly Law’s so-called rural hospital fund, a meager lifeline that won’t undo their damage and wouldn’t be needed if Republicans hadn’t gutted the system in the first place,” Neal said.
The hospital executives argued the higher reimbursement is necessary just to cover their overhead costs.
The executives cast blame for high costs on insurers for low reimbursement rates, especially amid rising inflation.
“When it comes to fixing the system, the only thing you all agree on, really, is that some other people, other issues — that’s the increase,” Smith said.