Community Blue is sold by a company called Highmark. Like U.P.M.C., it is both a hospital system and an insurance provider, part of a growing trend toward vertical consolidation in the two industries. These and other companies insist that such consolidation streamlines the caregiving system and thus benefits the patient. But in the short term, they are waging a vicious war over patients — and as the experience in Pittsburgh shows, it’s often the patients who are losing.
–Theresa Brown, NY Times
@afrakt (via phone)
