Hospitals, you see, are mostly organized as non-profit corporations. So the 1000% markup for your aspirin is not a profit.

http://hospitalvictims.com/hv_hosp_home.asp is an interesting site. It seems that a markup for hospital services of 50% is by far the rarest of rates. What is the more common? Is it 10% or 5%? No, it is 150%.

Mergers and acquisitions probably account for much of the costs associated with hospitals, although it is not feasible to accurately account for the amount because the non-profit status of hospitals hinders investigation by anything other than civil or criminal subpoena. It is clear that huge markups like those enjoyed by hospitals can’t be accounted for by the standard bromides of helping out the uninsured.

The plain fact is that the non-profit status of hospitals shields the principals of hospitals from scrutiny into their true costs and profits. And, as with any mystery, you have to wonder what it is that is being hidden.

http://www.econ.duke.edu/~fsloan/156/articles/Sloan_Article.html gives us a clue as to what is being hidden. As it turns out, one of the really sweet benefits of non-profit organization is that board members of a non-profits can distribute money to themselves at their complete discretion. Non-profits generally share board member with other non-profits and are selected from a closed community. The selection process is completely arbitrary and tends to follow, shall we say, aristocratic practices.

Now how plausible is it that non-profit hospitals would have an interest in blackmailing insurers for doubling and more of fees when real cost in real for profit companies never ever double. No one outside of a few prosecutors and litigants has ever laid eyes on the true accounts of a modern non-profit hospital, so we can’t know. It just seems that markups of 150% in a nation that is struggling with its healthcare bill is excessive and that the only way to find out if it is, is to open up the books of these non-profits. Let the public examine what is true and what is false about a system that apparently has something to hide.