Re:When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested
by ceejayoz on Monday October 21, 2019 @09:00AM
(#21311741)
The "not for profit" thing is a bit of a fiddle.
Sure, there aren't shareholders getting dividends. There are plenty of other motives that push non-profit hospital systems to want to make money. New buildings, fancy robotic surgery machines, cushy patient amenities to compete with the other system in town, expensive administrators and staff...
The [majority of hospitals in the US are non-for-profit](https://www.aha.org/statistics/fast-facts-us-hospitals). Needless to say, they are not able to provide a cheaper service than the for-profit hospitals. So there is some factor, unrelated to profit, which makes healthcare expensive.
If profit was causing healthcare expenses to rise, then non-for-profit hospitals should be be able to maintain lower prices than for-profit ones. They can't. So what's driving up the cost? The answer is pretty simple: government intervention.