Quote (Voyaging @ Jul 17 2015 09:01pm)
Someone made a very good post on the reddit submission when this image was originally posted. I thought you guys would like to read it:
There's a few things he leaves out.
1. Hospitals will charge patients different amounts based on their income. There was a story in the news a year or two ago about a hospital which charged a woman a few thousand, then when they found out she owned a house upped the bills and placed a lien on her house. It's also well documented that hospitals in insurance networks will make deals with insurance providers to charge significantly less, but still enough to make a tidy profit. I don't know about medicare and medicaid, but payment from insurance companies isn't the issue. Larger hospitals will even be able to strong-arm the insurance companies for much higher payments than smaller organizations, this is also well documented, but regardless they won't lose money from an insured patient.
2. High cost for treating freeloaders isn't a huge cost for hospitals. Any amount which isn't payed will be written off on taxes. Hospitals also get subsidies from the government to pay for freeloaders without insurance. This is primarily an issue in areas with high instances of under or uninsured patients and finances are tight, but it isn't endemic to our healthcare system.