This whole argument of yours is to go after me personally. What you aren't telling us is that the hospital system that performed the double bypass is a nonprofit. Thus they can charge a bit extra on every insured patient to cover the non insured. Not charge exorbitant amounts to pad profits. What you aren't saying is most working class people if they aren't working don't have insurance. You want to say I didn't take care of business personally but I'm in the same boat as everyone else. What you don't say is that hospitals charge insurance companies a lot less than what they charge people who self insure or don't have insurance. My stent in 2011 cost over $50k but ultimately they charged my company insurance $16k and me $1600. I was told the reason why is they have pre negotiated amounts they charge insurance companies. So you railing that the taxpayer was on the hook for over $100k for my double bypass isn't correct, not by a long shot. Nor are the insured paying for over $100k. Once again either you are uninformed or you're just making stuff up. Meanwhile we know for a fact that individuals making up to $125k or couples making up to $250k are fine in your book to have the taxpayer pay off their student loan debt. $34 trillion in debt and counting and yet you are fine with buying votes with our tax dollars. You don't want to see our government cut back on anything because spending is power and nothing is more important to you than controlling.everyone else with the money. In effect you're just another angry Karen sticking her nose in where it doesn't belong. And always getting it wrong.
How do you know it's only "a bit extra"? The point is the system served you quite well in your time of need and I'm happy that it did. But you tell me was the hidden tax that was responsible for your positive outcome fair to the people who had to pay it? And the agreed to charges between provider and insurer is negotiated and it very much includes surcharges to cover the cost of charity care because the law requires it.
Instead of confronting it you go running off to completely unrelated matters like student loans and defense spending in an effort to deflect it. And please do not continue to misunderstand what a nonprofit healthcare facility actually is. It very much is a FOR PROFIT operation. They don't pay taxes on profits or taxes such as property taxes on their real estate holdings and some get discounted rates for things like water and sewage. It is simply another form of legal tax evasion.
Again the only way to severely reduce or eliminate Medicaid spending is to change the law allowing hospitals to deny care to those who can't pay. And you might get it given the ongoing complaint by care providers that Medicaid reimbursements are slow to come and no longer enough to cover costs and care providers are experiencing delays in getting their paychecks some going as much as 3 weeks without pay.
