[FireBeyond]

They don't receive the PFS payment, but they certainly do for room fees, imaging, labs and other diagnostics, not to mention medications.

And the patient is still tended to by nurses, who do absolutely generate revenue for the hospital.

While they don't get a PFS payment, we also can't provide that Medicare pays for the residency and then everything else is a charity case for the hospital.

[rayiner]

That argument doesn't respond to whether it's "strange" that residents are unprofitable. It's just the unsupported assertion that certain unquantified ancillary payments will exceed the unquantified costs of employing and supervising a resident. But clearly they don't, or else hospitals would create more resident positions.

[FireBeyond]

Well, there's the perspective that it's not "unprofitable" to use a resident, but it's _more_ profitable to use a physician.

[rayiner]

The charge is that hospitals are not creating more residencies in order to collude to drive up doctor salaries. Even if residents were profitable, but less profitable than experienced physicians, it would still be a rational business decision—rather than improper collusion—to hire physicians instead of residents.