That can't possibly be true of a hospital that charged $3000 for something on Tuesday, and $53000 for the same thing on Friday.
(Under reasonable assumptions like that Tuesday wasn't done at a $25K loss relative to breaking even; why would such be the case? And that they are busy with procedures, not simply doing a way overpriced procedure once every few weeks, and then just burning through cash in between that time.)
> Non profits can be as greedy as any other organization.
The term ‘non-profit’ is one I find hilarious. With the smoke and mirrors of accounting and standard insurance company behaviour it can mean anything.
The directors can get bonuses, the cars can be upgraded and the conferences/holidays can get more impressive. It’s surprising that ‘non-profit’ doesn’t generate an eye-roll in more people.
Very few hospitals do cost-accounting, so they don't even know how much things cost; this results in the inconsistencies you see in prices.
From Wikipedia:
>"In 2003, of the roughly 3,900 nonfederal, short-term, acute care general hospitals in the United States, the majority—about 62 percent—were nonprofit. The rest included government hospitals (20 percent) and for-profit hospitals (18 percent)"
Cost accounting consists of more than just balancing a chequebook to the penny; you need to attribute expenses to specific procedures, which can get a bit tricky. It requires discipline and cooperation throughout the organization, which would likely be a huge change for hospitals (as I'm certain doctors would be loathe to log their time like lawyers do).
OK, so if my company knows how much it's spending on toilet paper for the washroom, but doesn't know exactly which departments are wiping how much ass, then we are not doing cost accounting though we are tracking the bulk expense properly in the ledger. We are not able to answer the question of how much toilet paper is required to operate our marketing department, for instance.
Widely used supplies like that are usually just put into a general overhead account, sometimes specific to a department.
Healthcare companies would need to attribute things like depreciation of equipment (MRIs & CAT scanners for example), as well as doctor and nurse time (outside of operating rooms). These things are generally not tracked accurately, and many professionals are indignant at the idea that they could be.
That can't possibly be true of a hospital that charged $3000 for something on Tuesday, and $53000 for the same thing on Friday.
(Under reasonable assumptions like that Tuesday wasn't done at a $25K loss relative to breaking even; why would such be the case? And that they are busy with procedures, not simply doing a way overpriced procedure once every few weeks, and then just burning through cash in between that time.)