How COVID-19 warped payer-provider contract negotiations
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The COVID-19 pandemic brought on a year of thanking healthcare workers. In Chicago, residents held nightly light shows thanking their providers. In New York City, people sang in the streets.
A year later, some experts believe health systems may be using their post-COVID-19 publicity glow to pressure insurers into rate increases, pointing to a rash of recent tense negotiations erupting into the public sphere. That s something we need to watch out for the, kind of the afterglow of public support, and then the argument that we lost money, we need to make it up, said Glenn Melnick, a professor of healthcare at the University of Southern California, who conducts research on payer-provider negotiations. I do think that we will see that this year and next.