President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Do we know what profit margins are for for-profit hospitals? Or the general cost difference between a for- and non-profit hospital?

 

Did magazines like The Atlantic and The New Yorker ever sell many single copies?

 

Growing up around New York City, newsstands were everywhere.

Once I moved out of new York, I discovered that not every city has newsstands like New York does. Has the number dropped dramatically in NYC as well?

 

Obviously not representative, but being from Cleveland, first one I looked up was CC:

 

Regarding the cost of healthcare, specifically of hospitalization...

Seems to me, that there is a ton of waste, and redundancy in hospitals. There's a ton of monitoring and testing.

Now, all of this increases the care, and reduces the risk of things like infection.

But, we're paying a ton for this, and I have to wonder if the benefit is marginal.

But, does anyone here think that we'd settle for less? We want the very best, most expensive healthcare in the world, but we don't want to pay what that costs.

 

When a bill goes from $48,000 to $21,000 because a government is negotiating instead of an individual, and then the hospital goes ahead and threatens the individual anyway, is your sarcasm really hitting the mark?

I think Brill wrote about this awhile back. People just don't see health care the way they do buying a car. There might be one hospital in town. They don't know they can negotiate and I've been in that position where nurses and doctors try to leverage how much you care about your own health as a way of having you agree to costly tests. (Knew I had acid reflux, they wanted me to take some heart tests, I said no, they threatened me with my own death)

 

I understand. I was reacting to the use of "profit" as a blanket pejorative.

And a lot of times, people aren't in position to negotiate at all, because it's an emergency situation.

I concede the point about hospitals and actually want to talk and learn more about it.

 

Hoo, boy.

 

Isn't part of the problem that because insurance pays much/most of the cost, a discussion of cost never comes up?

If people were paying medical costs out of a health savings account, or even a government stipend for healthcare, someone might question why a six liters of sterile saltwater, which costs a dollar or less to manufacture, retails for hundreds of dollars.

How to Charge $546 for Six Liters of Saltwater