Longtime observers of the Massachusetts hospital industry may be forgiven if they look at the current Steward Health Care debacle and find themselves saying, "I’ve seen this movie before" — in the 1980s. In 1983 Congress passed amendments to Social Security that changed the way hospitals did business. Previously, they were reimbursed on a retrospective basis and were paid what they spent on patient care. As a result, they had little incentive to control expenses, causing healthcare costs to rise faster than the overall rate of inflation.
