ASKED & ANSWERED Building relationships to head off supply-chain woes PAGE 5
CRAINSNEWYORK.COM
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FEMALE FUNDING Women-led startups see record venture capital investment PAGE 3
NOVEMBER 15, 2021
STATE OF HEALTH CARE
THE REAL COST OF CARE New York hospitals charge patients wildly different amounts for the same procedures, a Crain’s analysis finds
BY AMANDA GLODOWSKI AND MAYA KAUFMAN
R
FRANCESCO CICCOLELLA
ankings tout the best hospitals to receive cancer care or treatment of a heart attack. They recommend where to go for a hip or a knee replacement. But tools are scarce for patients who want to choose a hospital based on costs. A federal rule that went into effect Jan. 1 was intended to provide just that. Enacted by the Trump administration, it requires hospitals to disclose their cash prices, or the costs of procedures without health insurance, and the rates they negotiate with insurance companies for all their services. In New York City the result has been haphazard at best INSIDE and defiantly noncompliant at worst. For facilities that THE LIST have shared at least some of the figures, the files are difThe area’s largest ficult or impossible to navigate without tech savvy, physician groups dogged determination and advanced data skills. PAGE 29 But the patchwork of information that can be extracted shows that local hospitals charge patients wildly difRising labor costs ferent amounts for the same few common procedures— and health-tech with variations at times exceeding $10,000, according to unicorns to watch a Crain’s analysis undertaken in partnership with TurPAGE 34 quoise Health, a health-tech company that built a machine-learning algorithm to parse the pricing data. An MRI scan of the brain, for example, costs $446 without insurance at a See COSTS on page 32
IN THE MARKETS
A favorite play on Wall Street hits IRS crosshairs Stock buybacks face 1% tax bite as other cherished loopholes survive
NEWSPAPER
VOL. 37, NO. 41
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BY AARON ELSTEIN
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early all of the finance community’s most cherished tax loopholes survived as Washington hunted for revenue to pay for the Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion social spending and cli-
© 2021 CRAIN COMMUNICATIONS INC.
mate package. But the cost for one of Wall Street’s favorite pastimes stands to get more expensive. A 1% excise tax on corporate stock buybacks survived all the wheeling and dealing. It will raise $124 billion in revenue over time, assuming Congress passes Presi-
dent Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan after members return Nov. 15. The new excise tax is part of a broader plan that includes a new minimum 15% tax on corporate profits, an expansion of taxes on overseas earnings of U.S. companies, and surcharges on households
earning at least $10 million a year. Stock buybacks are popular with companies and institutional investors because earnings get distributed over fewer shares. Such repurchases were illegal until 1982 See BILL on page 35
GOTHAM GIGS
RESIDENTIAL SPOTLIGHT
CBD BUSINESS OWNER HAS HIGH HOPES
Next act for a Victorian-era firehouse
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