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“Large hospital systems, if they are the dominant entity in a particular area, have outsized market power to essentially force insurers to comply with whatever rate that they’re looking for,” Murphy said. “And naturally insurers pass those higher prices down onto their enrollees in the forms of higher premiums.” 

“What lawmakers shouldn’t do is punt this problem down the road. Maine doesn’t need a study committee on medical costs. It essentially already has one and it brought forward the idea for caps on hospital prices.”  

"While there's a lot of focus on insurance when we talk about affordability of healthcare, looking at the data, really the primary driver of these premium increases and out of pocket increases that consumers in Maine have been seeing over the past few years is the cost of the healthcare services that are being used," she (Garratt-Reed) says.