Hacker News Reader

On the occasions that I’ve watched a hospital go through the actual process of selling a small amount of inexpensive medication for a large amount of money, there is a ridiculous amount of ceremony involved. I can easily imagine that it costs that hospital 2 cents for the pill, $5 in amortized capital plus operating expense for the facility that stores that pill, plus $25 in labor and IT expenses to get that pill to the patient.

View on HN

My wifes a doctor and i can assure you they are gouging you. What it is is that the insurance companys are really in the purchase processing business. So what they do is institute fees on every possible charge and the hospitals in our area mark everything up as a result. Thats part of the problem.

I, too, can invent numbers from nothing.

Yes, but can you personally allocate four people, two computers, a wristband, a HIPAA-compliant database, a HIPAA-compliant data entry system, and at least two barcode scanners to get an aspirin out of the bottle?

I’m making a serious point here: medical overspending is not just gobs of money ending up in a single pocket. The US medical system really is incredibly complex, and the money is moving all over the place and being spent on many things. Most of those cost centers may all zero or even negative value to the patient, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com