HARRISBURG (TNS) — When lawmakers return to Harrisburg for a new session in 2025, they once again may wrestle with the question of whether to give the attorney general power to seek a halt to proposed hospital mergers that are deemed to be against the public interest.
A bill conveying that power to the attorney general got bipartisan support in the House before stalling in the Senate a few months ago. A similar bill is likely to be filed sometime in the new session, according to a spokesperson for a co-sponsor, Democratic Rep. Paul Takac of Centre County.
Health care disruption and frustration — often linked to closures — has increased in recent years. Data on the Pennsylvania Health Access Network website shows that over the last 20 years, there have been 112 hospital mergers and acquisitions in Pennsylvania, with 27 hospital closures in the same period. Another 19 ended access to emergency care, maternity care, or other key services.
“Our analysis shows that 1 in 3 hospital mergers and acquisitions lead to a full or partial hospital closure,” PHAN reported.
Attempts to contact Rep. Lisa Borowski, a Delaware County Democrat and prime sponsor for the bill involving the attorney general, were not successful. In a memo to colleagues, Borowski and Takac wrote that while the attorney general currently can scrutinize sales involving nonprofit health facilities, those reviews are limited to making sure charitable assets are being used lawfully.
When it passed the Democrat-controlled House in July on a 114-88 vote, 12 Republicans joined all Democrats in voting for the bill. One of the Republicans was Rep. Dawn Keefer of York County, who since has won election to the Senate.
“I think we need to pick this back up and continue the conversations,” Keefer said in an interview last week.
She portrayed at least some of the hospital closures as the product of an environment where there is no legitimate competition.
The health care system has become “vertically integrated,” she said. Hospitals own physician practices, insurance companies own pharmacy benefit managers, and other linkages exist between once-distinct sources of services or products that serve to reduce competition.
The attorney general bill, Keefer said, was “not the best solution, but it was a compromise that all parties working on this came to.”
A spokesperson for Attorney General Michelle Henry, Brett Hambright, said in October her office has been involved in discussions about the bill. The point, he said, was to help make sure “that is proper state oversight of transactions which, in some past instances, have obstructed affordable access to quality care.” Attorney General-elect Dave Sunday, a York County Republican, is expected to be sworn in to office in January.
Other bills introduced in the soon-to-end 2023-24 session dealt with the same general issue.
One from Sen. Tim Kearney, D- Delaware, would require for-profit health systems to file with the attorney general’s office before completing purchases or sales of health system facilities, sales-leaseback agreements, “private practice roll-ups” and other transactions. That bill did not advance beyond committee.
Another bill, filed by Sen. Katie Muth, D-Montgomery, would require state Department of Health approval before a hospital or hospital system can be purchased. That bill also did not advance beyond committee.
