HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – State lawmakers grilled executives from Hawaii Pacific Health (HPH) and Hawaii Medical Service Association (HMSA) about their proposed partnership, One Health Hawaii, and its potential impact on healthcare costs on Wednesday.
The organizations call the merger a necessary disruption to help lower administrative costs and save about $2 billion over a decade.
“Without change, those pressures will only increase, so I would argue that danger to safety net procedures and provider mix and all of that are far more concerning in the current status quo than they would be in an integrated model,” Ray Vara, president and CEO of Hawaii Pacific Health.
HMSA controls about 70% of the health insurance market in Hawaii, and critics worry it will create an anti-competitive market that will shift the burden and patient costs to other hospitals.
“There needs to be some assurances, and we’re not hearing those assurances,” Jason Chang, president and CEO of Queen’s Health System. “If you have better access to commercial populations, commercial patients, then everybody else is left to pick up the pieces, and the whole health system inflates.”
Critics said there is little precedent for a hospital system merging with a monopoly health insurer, and a regulatory framework is needed to ensure oversight and accountability.
The merger is undergoing an antitrust review by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Attorney General, and federal insurance regulators.
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