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It’s all about the patient. Or at least about keeping patients and the revenue generated for their medical care. As health care is rocked by deals aimed at shattering traditional boundaries between businesses, some of the nation’s biggest hospital groups are doubling down on mergers that seem much more conventional. Skeptics say some of these hospital deals are more of the same: systems seeking to increase their leverage with insurance companies and charge more for care. (Abelson, 12/18)

The amount of past-due medical debt in the U.S. is about $75 billion, spread among 43 million people, according to estimates from economists at MIT, Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. About half of all collections lines on credit reports are related to medical debt, a 2014 report  from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau showed. (Tozzi, 12/18)

Not long after California's attorney general was sworn in at the beginning of this year, hospitals got to work renewing pleas his predecessor had shot down to more than halve their charity-care obligations. The California Hospital Association said it's in talks with Attorney General Xavier Becerra's office on behalf of a handful of not-for-profit hospitals that need his permission to cut charity care. Kamala Harris, who preceded Becerra, denied four such requests before leaving her post to serve in the U.S. Senate. This fall, requests from the same four hospitals trickled back in, but the CHA says it knows of roughly 15 that want to make the change. (Bannow, 12/18)

Xiaoyuan Yang was pregnant and her husband Weiming Lei needed a job when they moved more than 20 years ago from Guangzhou, China, to Los Angeles. "We knew nothing, and we didn't understand anything," Lei said. "Someone told us to live in Chinatown. "There, Yang found work at a Chinese restaurant, and their neighbors told them about a hospital just down the street where the staff spoke not only Mandarin and Cantonese, but the Toishan and Zhongshan dialects as well. (Shyong, 12/18)

A self-described grass-roots coalition opposed to the proposed merger of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Lahey Health is backed by a high-profile Beacon Hill lobbying and consulting firm with ties to a competing hospital system. Executives of Boston-based Northwind Strategies established the Make Healthcare Affordable Coalition last month, according to public records filed with the secretary of state’s office. (Dayal McCluskey, 12/19)

They're a staple of hospital treatment: the clear plastic bags of saline solution hanging on poles above the patients' beds. ...And they're now in short supply around the country — including at Massachusetts General Hospital, which is raising a red flag about the ongoing inconsistency in supplies of intravenous fluid. (Goldberg, 12/18)