Well, there is that. But there is also the fact that they charge you or your insurance company to smooth out other costs like $2,000,000.00 cancer treatment or for people who show up to the hospital, don’t have insurance, and the hospital has to treat them.
I’m reaching the point where I don’t really care if it’s private or public, but what we are doing today is the worst of both worlds. It either needs to be fully private, maybe with mandatory insurance purchase, or it needs to be fully public, though that has its own baggage.
“ But there is also the fact that they charge you or your insurance company to smooth out other costs like $2,000,000.00 cancer treatment or for people who show up to the hospital, don’t have insurance, and the hospital has to treat them”
I bet whatever cost these patients cause, the hospital will inflate this by an order of magnitude. It’s the same with charity care. Hey, my sticker price for an aspirin is $1000. I’ll give away 10 aspirin and I can get credit for $10000 charity.
A lot of that is tied into billing in general, even without the people who can't afford to pay for their care. When they send out an invoice for $50,000 for services rendered, even if the insurance company only ends up paying them a fraction of that, when it comes to accounting and taxes you can be sure they are using that $50,000 number for deductions and such when it benefits them.
I’m reaching the point where I don’t really care if it’s private or public, but what we are doing today is the worst of both worlds. It either needs to be fully private, maybe with mandatory insurance purchase, or it needs to be fully public, though that has its own baggage.