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>>> Hospitals have an operating margin of 2-5%. Medicare pays 50% less than private insurance.

The hospital can be paid less without reducing their margin if they can remove a cost from their balance sheet. It does not make the system cheaper overall, but it means the hospital does not have to bear those costs directly. They may not have to bear them at all, because hospitals are not the only things in the system.

Think about corps merging to save cost on back office. Here is the same idea. With AI, it would even cut additional order of magnitude of cost.

No, because that cost is included in the $300 billion increase in spending that is part of the calculation they do.