Seattle coronavirus survivor gets a $1.1M, 181-page hospital bill
&quot;because Flor has insurance including Medicare, he won’t have to pay the vast majority of it&quot;<p>Did they really use stuff that truly cost $1.1M on him, and did they <i>need</i> to? If they&#x27;re charging some absurd amount for a room, maybe it&#x27;s just a way of rationing at some level, not what is being consumed.<p>I wish people would look at more what was spent in resources than what the dollar amount of the treatment was - if the patient didn&#x27;t pay, then what matters to society is what was spent by society, not what number was written down as part of weird accounting.<p>The article acknowledged &quot;hospitals get paid only a portion of the amount they bill&quot;. It&#x27;s not helpful or necessary to write anguished stuff based on your conviction that the accounting style is wrong. What matters is the effect on real people.<p>On the other hand, if the reason that drug costs for instance were so high was because unnecessary drugs were used, or because they were wasted, or because the manufacturing of them was inefficient, that&#x27;s a real problem and I wish that an article like this would focus on it, delve into it. Just...don&#x27;t write stuff about how America is terrible because big numbers are scary.<p>I can&#x27;t tell if the article is meant to be pro or con universal coverage, or if the point is, America is terrible and always will be and universal coverage won&#x27;t fix it. If the point is the latter, I think it&#x27;s a cheap effort in support. If people take it seriously, it&#x27;s very demotivational and makes me want to find a scapegoat for catharsis. Which for me, the default is adtech incentives these days.