Health care's neglected supply side

Most discussions of health care in the US focus on the consumer or demand side: how do we lower drug prices for patients? How do we help the 8 percent of Americans lacking health insurance? How do we make it easier for people with insurance to get care? Those are all important questions, but Ashish Jha, dean of Brown’s School of Public Health and former Covid-19 czar under Biden, makes a compelling case that they’ve overshadowed equally important questions about supply: are too many hospitals and practices merging? Are we letting enough hospitals be built, and physicians be licensed? Are insurance payments incentivizing waste? Jha is starting a series of essays on these questions, and while the intro is light on details, I’ll be checking back in regularly.