Out here, it’s Sutter Health. They have a slightly different strategy involving acquiring near-monopoly status and screwing everyone over. It’s gotten so bad that the state is suing to partially break them up.
To be somewhat fair to the hospital groups in question, a lot of this is driven by outlandish regulation that makes it hard for independent medical groups to survive.
That regulation favors hospital groups and reinforces their monopolies. Independent physicians who can't deal with the regulations sell out to big hospital groups, who then, enabled by their greater control of physician supply, squeeze insurance companies, who then in turn must squeeze the remaining independent physicians who can't fight back, who then give up and sell to hospitals
I think in some ways the ACA empowered monopolies by enabling them to further consolidate physician supply in the guise of integrating data for "population health"
The ACA was essentially written by the big industry insiders that are now benefiting from it. This is cronyism, not capitalism, and is the hallmark of a socialist / regulatory state.
Sutter is pretty good though, it's nice to have comprehensive care in the same EMR. Kaiser is a competitor too and is actually the model the OP denigrates as UPMC at reasonable costs. Stanford is also very good especially if you actually get sick and need comprehensive care.
https://www.upmc.com/about/support/faq
Out here, it’s Sutter Health. They have a slightly different strategy involving acquiring near-monopoly status and screwing everyone over. It’s gotten so bad that the state is suing to partially break them up.
To be somewhat fair to the hospital groups in question, a lot of this is driven by outlandish regulation that makes it hard for independent medical groups to survive.