You think maybe those $50 cotton swabs I had to pay for might, just might, have something to do with the fact that some hospitals are still able to turn a profit?
No one pays $50 for cotton swabs. No one. But you have to understand that the supplies sold in emergency departments are marked up to reflect allocations of the fixed costs of having a facility that is staffed 24/7. There are, believe it or not, times of day when the ER is paying physicians, nurses, and other professionals to be there even when there are no customers.
Remember: they are MARKING UP their prices for everyone with coverage, (and the insurance companies themselves have to raise the cost of insurance exactly because the medical costs rise), all of this to COVER the embedded losses they must endure from the uninsured.
Of course, we all pay for it. But it is important to remember that persons with Medicare and Medicaid, which don't pay their own costs, are a far bigger problem than uncompensated care. In most areas, hospitals would gladly take care of the 15% without any coverage if only they were paid fairly by government payers. And this is the heart of the problem with health care cost increases: because governments have imposed price controls, their share of ordinary price increases must be borne by insurance ratepayers. The solution is, of course, to get government out of the health care business.
>> So... YOU (and I) are PAYING already, and have been for years and years, through higher then necessary *medical bills* and higher-then-would-otherwise-be-required *insurance bills*.
>> There is no free lunch.
NO, there is no free lunch, but lunch is a hell of a lot cheaper if government wasn't involved, corrupting market processes with price controls. |
