“why weren’t most hospitals bankrupt before 1965”
They were a lot smaller and cheaper to run.
Hospital employees were generally poorly paid back then, closer to the minimum wage.
I read about a nurse making $180,000/year in San Francisco in article about California housing prices yesterday.
A comparable nurse might have made $3,200/year in 1965.
Why do you think that was?
Hospital employees were generally poorly paid back then
I doubt it. Inflation was much lower then.
The point is, we didn't have a healthcare crisis before 1965. Government CREATED the crisis, and now their spokesmen, - I hope you're not one of them - decry the effects of dismantling government interference with healthcare which problems government caused. Government's answer for their failure is ALWAYS more government.
And that is just the economic argument. The legal argument is much more straightforward and understandable: federal government interference in healthcare is unconstitutional. Nowhere does the Constitution give the feds authority to interfere with healthcare. So federal interference with healthcare is tyranny, defined as unconstitutional federal acts.
For economic and constitutional reasons, the feds need to get OUT of healthcare and let the marketplace run the show as it did before 1965 and America had the best healthcare in the world. As in other things so in healthcare, America is not about poverty-stricken, failed governmental socialist tyranny, it is about freedom which leads to wealth and prosperity.