How Hospital Bills Have Gotten So Far Out of Hand, and Who Profits
Comment: Dr. Keith Smith, M.D., co-founder of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, explains in plain language how hospitals’ bills have gotten so far out of hand, and how the insurance industry, brokers, and the hospitals themselves all benefit from an unholy collusion, at Americans’ expense.
“We opened the Surgery Center of Oklahoma in May of 1997 and knew within two months that the highest quality of care–with a full staff–was not only possible, but could be accomplished profitably for about a tenth of what these so-called not-for-profit hospitals were charging patients.”
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“The Big Lie was that hospitals were struggling financially due to all the uninsured folks utilizing their emergency rooms, leading to what we all know as ‘cost-shifting.’ I’ve written about this lie extensively, and we all now know that the hospitals get paid, even when they ‘don’t get paid.’ In fact, to the extent that they claim that they don’t get paid, they get paid more.
This is ‘uncompensated care.’ This is the ‘uncompensated care’ system they don’t want anybody to talk about. A gift from Uncle Sam, and one which happens to be the engine for giant hospital bill creation. I would never have understood the various lies conjured up by the hospitals to maintain the fiction of their not-for-profit status, had I not owned and operated my own medical facility.”
14 minute video [link]