I don't have any such evidence and I agree with you that it's quite possible that this particular hospital isn't being directly influenced - the fact that the market seems to be dictating that these prices are acceptable could in fact be the sole influence over the charge master - but it's my view that this pricing level would be impossible is surrounding private healthcare facilities had more reasonable prices.
This, and the number of bad actors involved with healthcare, is sort of the issue - whenever the PBMs are under attack they claim innocence and say it's the pharma manufacturers - similarly here the hospital did indeed act in a rational way in their pricing, but that way is only made rational by the broken national system - and if, while an aspirin at a hospital normally costs 100$, at this publicly funded hospital that aspirin cost you 3c[1] then there would probably be outcry by the private hospital that the public healthcare offering is unfairly undercutting prices in a manner that private organization couldn't compete with - you can see this happening right now with the wonderful debate on municipal internet.
1. Insert reasonable cost here, 3c seems much less stupid expensive to me, it's probably still like a 100% markup if buying in bulk but Amazon is willing to give me 100 pills of aspirin for $3.08
This, and the number of bad actors involved with healthcare, is sort of the issue - whenever the PBMs are under attack they claim innocence and say it's the pharma manufacturers - similarly here the hospital did indeed act in a rational way in their pricing, but that way is only made rational by the broken national system - and if, while an aspirin at a hospital normally costs 100$, at this publicly funded hospital that aspirin cost you 3c[1] then there would probably be outcry by the private hospital that the public healthcare offering is unfairly undercutting prices in a manner that private organization couldn't compete with - you can see this happening right now with the wonderful debate on municipal internet.
1. Insert reasonable cost here, 3c seems much less stupid expensive to me, it's probably still like a 100% markup if buying in bulk but Amazon is willing to give me 100 pills of aspirin for $3.08