Who Speaks for Kaiser

My favorite health law news item of last week has to have concerned Prime Healthcare's and Kaiser's announcement of mutual dismissals of reimbursement based law suits.  The lawsuits will be resolved through confidential and binding arbitration — a very Kaiserly resolution.

It gets better. Kaiser also chose to announce that it has not agreed to support Prime's acquisition of the Daughters of Charity hospitals, despite Prime's announcement to the contrary.

This tells us a few things. First, it tells us that Kaiser's endorsement of the deal was on the table. Second, it tells us that these two are not through miscommunicating, whether by accident or design.