Why is medical treatment so danged expensive?

Question

Seriously, I was in the hospital, and they charged me 80 friggin' dollars for a small package of plastic tubes you know dang well didn't cost 2 bucks. This is just one example of the gross expenses of a hospital stay. Why is that? Even walking into a doctor's office to get your tonsils examined can set you back 200 bucks. Where is this money going? Why did my 7 day hospital stay cost 12k?

Answer 1

It's a con trick played on the American people by rich corporations.

American health care is the most expensive per capita than any other country in the world.  And yet 1/6th of the population doesn't have proper access to it.

Medical bills are the leading cause of personal bankruptcy claims.

The system is sick and needs a serious revamp.

Answer 2

1.  Medicare budget cuts.

2.  FDA, who requires so many usless tests on drugs, yet allows salmonella infected tomatoes to enter the US.

3.  Millions of uninsured Americans.

4.  Bad/broken government.

5.  Millions of useless lawsuits.  What people dont realize is that when you sue a doctor, it kinda comes back to bite you in the butt in the form of higher charges.

6.  12-20 million people who are here illegally, who dont pay taxes but need health care.  I wonder how the ACLU will explain this one away.

I am sure there are many more that I have not though about.

Answer 3

because it involves risking life as life is too expensive thus has no value and thus approximately valued to be high  

Answer 4

With respect to the hospital issue, much of the money is used to pay for huge expenses associated with the infrastructure and personnel needed to run the hospital.

With respect to going to your physician's office, you must understand that a large part of your costs deal with overhead that the physician's office has to account for in addition to the liability the physician assumes upon accepting the physician-patient relationship.

The system is largely the product of extremely greedy Big Pharm, HMOs & extremely zealous attorneys in the age of litigation.

Answer 5

Ask any lawyer.  Ask the millions of "entitled" folks whose health care you are paying for (they're not paying anything for it).  Ask the FDA that required millions and millions of $ be spent before anything can be approved.

Answer 6

Don't be too sure about the plastic. The hospital has to pay outrageous wholesale costs, too, though we all know they also charge as much for a couple of Tylenol as you'd spend on a huge bottle of them at Wal-Mart or CostCo.

Doggie has this about right. Let's say you take your sore throat to one of the few remaining solo practitioners. You'll note he has a receptionist and three people to fill out forms that the government (CMS, primarily) and insurance companies require. He's also paying the salary of a nurse in an environment of a severe nursing shortage. And when he swabs your tonsils, rather than just plating the specimen and checking on it like he would have twenty years ago, it now has to be tested by CLIA-approved methods. (You have to be pretty good at a large part of the government alphabet just to survive these days.) The requirements are geometrically more complex in the hospital. A little extra safety or a little extra convenience costs a huge amount of money.