The Hill News

What is the shape of the healthcare business? By next year, more than 60 percent of America’s practicing doctors will be salaried employees of hospitals or health plans.

Big health insurers like Aetna and United Healthcare are continuing to get out of the business of taking actuarial risk for the health of their members. They’re gobbling up data and technology businesses, and morphing into service providers. Their aim is to sell products like electronic health records, data, and information technology programs to the person taking all the budgetary risk in the future â€" Uncle Sam.

Hospitals, for their part, are going to try to turn themselves into regional health plans by consolidating local medical providers. Their aim is to one-day contract with the government to sell something akin to health insurance directly to consumers on the new state exchanges that President Obama’s healthcare law creates. Never mind that provider-owned systems were a! ll the rage in the 1990s, only to see most go belly up because they couldn’t manage the actuarial risk or their balance sheets.

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