California Voice: Hospitals’ opaque pricing is crushing our state’s small businesses

Owners of small businesses are working hard to keep their doors open while offering employees quality benefits, but rising health care costs are making that harder every year.

One major driver of these costs is hospital pricing abuse, which often goes unnoticed but is devastating to California’s small business communities.

Large hospital systems have used their market dominance to drive up the prices they charge commercial payers, often billing them more than three times what Medicare pays for the same care.