[glbrew]

I believe in extreme cases such as this the hospital considers it an academic/research/prestige/security cost and would essentially charge the patient nothing or standard daily rates. I know when the Ebola scare happened in the US the prestigious hospitals near me were throwing $1,000,000's into constructing state of the art rooms for preparedness and to impress the CDC and get federal approval and academic recognition.

Also the hospitals can write these costs off of their taxes in various ways. If outbreaks like this cost them millions in expenses they have tax loopholes and it ends up costing them nothing.

[lozaning]

Im continually amazed at the way people think "write offs" work.

If a company spends X dollars on something, they don't pay X dollars less in taxes. They pay X dollars * their marginal tax rate less in taxes.

Now they may be able to apply for grants or other types of funding, but there is simply no way to "write things off" and then get them for free.

[glbrew]

I agree, I oversimplified for the sake of brevity. I also don't know the details for hospital accounting, only the generals and that it is very complicated. In reality it would be they spend say $1 million on these cases. They could then say it was a public service and take it off their overall income. CDC or other grants might pay the rest depending on the severity of the outbreak. Whatever isn't covered would still be potatoes for most hospitals and worth more in prestige than the hospital could have bought with the cash. Again, I literally saw hospital executives fight over Ebola patients.