It's the Brian Larosho on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone.

Did you see the guest essay in the New York Times the other day with the headline that

kind of explains the premise? The headline was, your exorbitant medical bill brought to

you by the latest hospital merger. The article is by Elizabeth Rosenthal, a senior contributing

editor at KFF Health News. She's a former ER physician and author of the book, An American

Sickness, How Healthcare Became Big Business, and How You Can Take It Back. She'll join us

in just a minute. But here's one sound bite first, just to show that this issue now has

President Biden's attention, too.

This morning Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission released a new merger

guidelines, and I competitive mergers can hurt people in the drive-up costs as well. For

example, hospital mergers have led to price increases of 20% or more health insurance

mergers have caused premiums to go up 7% on average. All told this kind of industry concentration

caused a typical American household and estimated $5,000 a year.

President Biden, speaking to his administration's competition council last week, thanks to

C-SPAN for the audio. Now Elizabeth Rosenthal to explain what's going on with hospital mergers,

why they're pushing up hospital bills and why it's difficult to stop them. Elizabeth,

thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC today.

Thanks for having me, Brent.

When I start with a local example to start out, even though I'm not sure New York is

suffering the worst of this, you mentioned Northwell Health in your article, very dominant

on Long Island. What separate medical institutions did that used to be, and what is it now if

you can do some basics on that?

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