And like I said, billing for normal patients isn't determined on medicare/medicaid rates and those are widely noted to be far lower than break-even let alone private billing rates.
> The researchers found the gap between the prices Medicare and private insurers pay hospitals increased from 2015 to 2017. Specifically, the researchers found private insurers in 2015 on average paid 236% of Medicare rates, and by 2017 that grew to 241% of Medicare rates.
https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2019/05/13/hospital-...
Again, I just provided you an example of me getting billed $250 for 15 minutes of physician time during an office literally this month. Right now. Just paid it today. Will seeing the bill solve this discussion for you?
> For the heart attack patient, it isn't the physician who is charging the huge amount. It's the hospital. The physician is only going to get a certain factor (somewhere between 1x - maybe 3x on the extreme end) of that $440 for the wRVUs.
That's not what we were discussing, you're changing the topic from an office visit to a heart attack. A doctor's office visit is mostly doctor time, there's no surgical ampitheatre necessary for an office visit. No recovery time in a hospital bed. Completely different situation.
$1000 an hour net billing rate for a specialist office visit sounds about right. That's what I just got billed.
And yes, student insurance is unusually generous and usually subsidized by the university in terms of provider reimbursement as well as direct rates. You are not paying the full freight there.
Furthermore, you are far, far off the reservation suggesting the normal billing for a heart attack is $3200. You are underneath the Dunning-Kruger curve here, you don't even know what you don't know and you think you are informed for it.
> Heart attack hospitalizations cost a median $53,384 and strokes cost $31,218, according to the study. The resulting catastrophic costs make it difficult for uninsured patients to keep up with basic living expenses such as transportation and housing, according to researchers.
https://newsarchive.heart.org/uninsured-patients-faced-devas...
Feel free to tell the American Heart Association that they're wrong by a factor of 15. Let me know when they update the article. You're wrong, it's no longer worth continuing the debate with you.
Again, like I said, I mean this in the gentlest possible way: if you think an average heart attack billing (not just for the doctor, the whole thing) is $3200, you're too privileged to have been exposed to the realities of the American system. You are more incorrect than you have the worldview to even grasp. Even the doctors' association themselves think you are wrong.