Not necessarily, the money squeezed out of insured patients like your niece is used to fund uninsured care. Also like the author shows, the money sent to the neediest doctors is a joke so naturally they will affiliate with a big bucks hospital just so they can keep providing care out in the country.
Her care probably cost close to that, if not more.
What do you think it costs to have that ICU available so your niece could be admitted to it at any time, 24/7/365?
And who do you think should pay for that cost?
More like a lot of people are making a little money each. Take surgical billing at a large hospital. Lets start with 20 operations of $5000 professional fees each. First only 40% of these are ever collected because of insurance underpayment and the fact that a lot of people simply don't pay. so we're down to $40,000. The dean of the medical school now takes 16% off the top to support the medical school so now we're down to $33,600. The hospital charges the surgeon 60% of the collected bill for overhead - support staff OR supplies salaries for anesthesiologists, OR techs, etc. so thats another $24,000. If you subtract this from the 33,600 that's left after the med school gets theirs, then the surgeon gets $9600 for 20 operations or about $480 each. Now the surgeon has to have initial clinic, pre-op clinic, the operation itself, and followup care. Say 2 hours before the operation, 3 hours for the operation, and about 3 hours after the operation for followup the hourly rate that the surgeon gets is about $60/hour. Not a whole lot for the level of training and commitment that the job entails.
The biggest cost is the cost of treating non-payers, so when you see the ER crowded with people who only speak spanish, you can bask in the warm glow of knowing that your money that you're paying for your health care is actually paying for them too. (Thank you Jorje Bush for making the USA the welfare choice for Central America)
One thing I forgot which is a large part of the hospital 60% overhead is that the hospital covers malpractice out of this overhead too.
If in the next bed after that was a high risk pregnancy where the woman came here from some other country to have an anchor baby, now that half million dollars must be divided by three. some estimates say there are 15 million illegals in the country right now, so those numbers add up quick.
Then include the costs for malpractice insurance for the three doctors, the hospital, the anesthesia people, and the pharmacy staff and you're talking even less.
Doctors make a decent living, but nowhere near the windfall that costs would indicate. Most of that money (and in truth... a whole bunch more after that) is being given away to someone else in the form of "FREE" stuff, at the taxpayers expense.
Ummmm ... That would be the Hospital.
Years ago, I was asked by the Hospital ER staff to come to the ER at 2:00 AM to evaluate an ER patient. At the time, I had just developed an infection in a blocked tear duct and was in pain. I asked the ER staff, as long as I was coming in at their request, if I could pick up my antibiotic prescription at the time I saw their ER patient. I paid for the antibiotic and it was only a few dollars.
The following month, the Hospital sent me a $50 bill for "ER services" for having the ER hand over the bottle of antibiotics.
I had a stent put in last year, spending one night in the hospital. The bill came to $40,000.
I am self-pay, so I paid cash.
Because I paid cash, they knocked $10,000 off the bill.
What that tells me is insurance claim handling drives up the cost of health care by a third.
The stockholders and executives of the insurance companies are making the money.
Medical schools used to attract the best and brightest now they are filled with foreign medical school graduates.