The American Hospital Association denounced a new report that links hospital price hikes to job loss in local communities and increased suicide rates, saying findings are based on "extremely limited and disparate data."
The study, published as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, indicated that for every 1% increase in healthcare prices, local employers' head count decreases by about 0.4%, and payments for tax-funded unemployment insurance grow 2.5%. The authors used data from large insurers to evaluate how hospital prices changed after more than 300 mergers between 2010 to 2015. Their analysis of how rising healthcare prices affect the local economy is based on filings with the Labor Department on premiums for fully insured employers and individual earnings and unemployment records.
In a June 24 statement, the AHA criticized the report authors for excluding health sector jobs from their analysis on local economy effects and called their claims that hospital price increases push up suicide rates "preposterous."
"The authors explicitly exclude health sector jobs, including the 6.4 million employees who work in hospitals," Molly Smith, AHA group vice president for public policy, wrote in the statement. "They also say nothing about how spending on hospital care supports millions of other jobs in the economy, including food service, child care, housing and retail needs of these millions of workers and their families."
The findings related to suicide are "unconscionable given the lengths hospitals go to every day to save people who have attempted or are at risk of taking their own life," Ms. Smith wrote.
The group called out one of the study's funding sources, Arnold Ventures, a philanthropy group that often funds research on hospital finances. The AHA has been at odds with Arnold Ventures-funded reports numerous times. Last summer, a Health Affairs study backed by Arnold Ventures found the cash reserves of nonprofit hospitals grew 68% from 2012 to 2019, while charity care spending dropped. The AHA countered the report's findings, noting the authors used a cost tool methodology that does not account for the full cost of providing care, and that the findings did not take into account community benefits provided by hospitals.
On the latest study, the AHA said the philanthropy group "should have directed this finding to research on how to reduce suicide rather than a shoddy attack on those who treat behavioral health problems every day."