I work in the healthcare industry and have a good friend who works at a major hospital.  You know what I&#x27;ve learned?<p><i>Hospitals have no clue what it costs them to serve an individual patient.</i><p>The lowest level where they understand costs is at the service level (e.g. ER, cardiac lab, stroke center).  It&#x27;s one of the reasons why you see all the wonky prices from hospitals: they just &quot;create&quot; prices for individual procedures until it covers their aggregate costs.  It doesn&#x27;t really matter to the hospital if procedure A is $1K and procedure B is $5K.  As long as A<i>rate + B</i>rate &gt; costs, they are fine with it.