AN EMERGING TREND IN MEDICAL CARE.

The doctor might be the same, but her bill’s going to be higher.

A strong trend of hospitals buying up physicians practices as well as hospital mergers is threatening to also drive up costs to patients — at least in the short term.

A key factor in that consolidation trend is doctors now are willing to work for someone else to get rid of the hassle of paperwork, fighting with insurance companies, increased overhead costs, and other duties that keep them away from patients.

“What you hear over and over again is: ‘I just want to practice medicine,’ ” said Shane Jackson, president of physicians staffing service LocumTenens.com.

Jackson and others said the trend toward doctors working for hospitals is being fueled by middle-age and older doctors who like the idea of spending less time on non-medicine-related work, and younger doctors who “place a lot of value on work-life balance.”

I'm hoping that more and more doctors will simply reject health insurance altogether and go to cash-only fee for service. Perhaps then health 'care' will return to the catastrophic health insurance model.