Children's health bill poses threat to physician-owned facilities

Physician-owned hospitals appear to be the punching bag in a bill moving through congress aiming to provide health insurance coverage to low-income children. Critics of the facilities, in particular Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA), feel that physician-owned hospitals tend to drive up costs because they perform unnecessary tests on patients. Stark has argued that the facilities "cherry pick" healthier patients "to the financial detriment of acute-care hospitals."

The bill would ban what Stark called "the unethical kickbacks that physicians receive from ownership hospitals, most of which are of questionable safety and quality." The legislation also would stop construction of any new physician-owned hospitals, and keep existing ones from expanding.

Proponents of the facilities, like the president of Physician Hospitals of America, believe that physician-owned hospitals actually have "better outcomes with higher costs," and claim that the government's own studies prove as much.

To learn more:
- check out this Wall Street Journal article [1]
- read the WSJ's Health Blog [2]