They came by the name honestly, but it is indeed a shame the way it has gone since the St. David's Foundation partnered with HCA.

The hospital(s) were originally founded and run by St. David's Episcopal and were one of the first and foremost hospitals in Austin, with very high quality care and good service to the community.

After operating them for nearly 75 years, and growing to an enormous enterprise, it became clear that a church congregation simply couldn't and shouldn't be operating them any further and they were spun out. Some of the profits are still sent back to the foundation for community health care grants.

This particular wealth extraction strategy would never have occurred under church leadership.

(disclaimer: I was a member of the church during this period and hold it in very high regard)

Well at some point she needed surgery (at HCA), and about five months later after dealing with 10 < x < 20 bills including one we'd never heard about until collections came knocking she just looked at me and said "Nobody knows what this is going to cost." It really bums me out that a human being working in healthcare here isn't able to even remotely predict the cost of a procedure at the hospital at which they work.

FTFY.

But seriously, how can it possibly be the hospital's fault for doing exactly what the law and market incentives give them every reason to do? There's almost no downward pressure on prices: little competition, no transparent pricing, huge barriers to market entry, and third party payers.

Because they're the ones actually doing it? Because they're run by adults who are fully capable of taking responsibility for their actions?

Worse, it's frequently the same people who argue that corporations are "people" arguing that corporations as a whole shouldn't be held responsible for their actions.

But to use people's lives as leverage to extract absurd amounts of money goes well beyond being immoral, it's just downright evil.

Of course they deserve to be paid. And paid quite nicely, too, considering the education levels needed to work such jobs (Lifeguards, obviously requiring significantly less than doctors)!

But they can be paid nicely while charging reasonable prices. The $164k the hospital charged that man for his heart attack is beyond unreasonable.