This is huge

Looking for someone to blame for rapidly rising Health Care costs in Massachusetts?   Look no further than Partners Health Care Systems.   You've got the largest collection of hospitals and physicians in the region using their power to demand their rates be 15-60% higher than other groups for the same services.   Just because they bargain collectively.  Fuck that. 

Luckily, The Justice Department is finally calling bullshit: 

The US Department of Justice has opened a civil investigation into possible anticompetitive behavior by Partners HealthCare System Inc., the region’s most powerful hospital and physician network.

In a letter sent to Partners and the state’s three largest health insurers on April 19, investigators from the Justice Department’s antitrust division demanded documents relating to Partners’ “contracting and other practices in health care markets in Eastern Massachusetts.’’

The letter, obtained by the Globe, said the probe sought to determine whether the practices violated the Sherman Antitrust Act, which bars companies from using their market power to limit trade or artificially raise prices. The parties were told to respond by May 19.

The federal probe comes as Massachusetts business and government officials wrangle over how to control soaring medical costs, and who is to blame for a decade of skyrocketing insurance premiums.

Boston-based Partners has been under growing scrutiny because of its market power and ability to draw high prices from insurers. The company employs about 5,500 physicians and operates a half dozen smaller hospitals, in addition to their prestigious Harvard-affiliated Boston teaching hospitals, Mass. General and the Brigham.

Everyone is so quick to blame the insurers as profit hogs, but no one looks at how well groups like Partners have been doing for the last decade or so.  Remember, 90% of premiums collected by insurers from YOU go towards medical costs.  The biggest group of medical professionals and facilities get paid more than everyone else.   The insurers - a lot of whom are non-profit - are held hostage by their collective bargaining. 

This is how to stop the bleeding.   Bravo to the Justice Dept.