The Hospital Cost Crisis: How Washington Banned Cheaper Care

You've been told American healthcare is expensive because of greedy insurers, pharma profits, or the cost of innovation. That story is incomplete to the point of being misleading.The largest single driver of US healthcare spending isn't drug companies — it's hospitals. And hospital prices haven't merely risen; they've grown roughly 3x faster than overall inflation since 2000. No sector does that for two decades by accident.In this episode, Dan McCoy MD breaks down the three federal policy choices that designed America's hospital pricing crisis:• ACA Section 6001 — the 2010 ban on new physician-owned hospitals, the one competitor proven to be roughly a third cheaper. $2.2B in planned development killed; 75 hospitals never built.• Certificate of Need laws — still active in 41 states, letting incumbent hospitals veto their own competition.• Site-specific Medicare payment — paying hospitals 2–3x what it pays a physician office for the identical service.Add a starved FTC (~13 challenges out of ~561 hospital mergers from 2010–2015) and you get the result: ~97% of metro areas with highly concentrated inpatient markets, and prices that rise 15–30% higher than competitive ones.It isn't a mystery. It's a mechanism.If you run a health plan, here's the takeaway: your hospital costs are set by market structure, not market forces — and the policy landscape (site-neutral reform, Certificate of Need repeal) is finally starting to shift.📺 Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/aWtOw8PxHTU📝 Full research sources, all 12 cited studies, and a bonus analysis of the political economy of hospital lobbying — on the SubstackSubscribe so you don't miss the next episode.This episode is for educational and informational purposes and is not medical, legal, or financial advice.