[aaavl2821]

I think tackling hospital / physician costs is even harder than drug pricing. Hospitals are major employers in almost every county. For a politician to break up hospital monopolies, they would be fighting against the one of the biggest employers in their constituency.

The American Hospital Association (the biggest hospital industry lobbying group) spends about as much as Phrma (the big pharma lobbying group) according to open secrets [0][1]. But the hospital industry has much more "soft power" because they are such a huge employer.

One solution is for payers to own more of their own providers, although that is challenging to implement and can lead to its own issues and bad incentives. I think one effective angle is to help more physicians stay independent -- there is probably a way to do this without legislation and i think some companies are working on this.

But i think one thing people can do is spread awareness of this issue -- you dont see it talked about in the media that much bc no group has an incentive to do so

[0] https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/lobby.php?id=D000000116

[1] https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=d00000050...