Hospital/insurer standoff goes public. Boston Globe quotes David Williams

Hospitals are pushing for double digit annual rate increases and health plans are pushing back. It’s an ugly situation. David Williams is quoted in the Boston Globe (Nearly 40,000 patients at Children’s, UMass, and Tenet hospitals may be forced to find new doctors or insurance plans)

David E. Williams, president of the Boston consulting firm Health Business Group, said Tenet and Point32Health should stop pointing fingers and settle the dispute. Patients and employers that provide health insurance, he said, are caught in the middle.

“We’re talking about the rate of inflation in the US being 3 percent overall,” Williams said. “So if I’m a patient or I’m an employer, I want to say to the health plan and the hospital, ‘Figure out a way to keep the price increase at that level. Don’t make it my problem.’ ”