On March 18, 2025, congressman Morgan Griffith of Virginia introduced a bill in the House of Representatives, H.R. 2191 to amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to revise certain physician self-referral exemptions relating to physician-owned hospitals. Translation: To amend, to an extent not yet known because the bill’s text is yet to be posted, the prohibitions on physician-owned hospitals.
As you probably know, in order to pass Obamacare, its sponsors sold out physicians in terms of your ability own new hospitals, or increase the percentage of physician ownership in, or increase the size of, almost any hospital participating in Medicare. That was their tradeoff for American Hospital Association’s support of Obamacare.
Come back and visit our blog, we’ll post updates on HR 2191 as they become available.
However, don’t get your hopes up too high—multiple prior attempts to restore physician civil rights have failed in the face of the hospital lobby’s protests.
Despite the fact that physician-owned hospitals provide high quality care and deliver high patient satisfaction, and that physician-owned hospitals are cheaper, saving Medicare billions over the usual investor-owned and non-taxpaying varieties, the hospital lobby just doesn’t want the competition.
Have hospitals no shame? Don’t they care about patients? Have they allowed greed to trump patient care?
Oh, those are the arguments and sound bites the hospitals toss at physicians. Sorry.
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