[msrenee]

I guess I feel like someone who did 8 years of school and I believe 4 years of residency which altogether generally costs them over $100k should be compensated for those expenditures of time and money. I don't feel that an aspirin should cost $5 just because you're laying in a hospital bed.

Maybe it's the opacity surrounding billing. What exactly costs $7k when you are hospitalized for 3 days? Hell, let's skip the ER and the procedures and go with a mental health inpatient stay. There's 72 hours of oversight by the staff. If they're making $20/hour, which isn't off-base to my knowledge and may be generous as they generally aren't BSNs, that's $1440 in wages. Food for 3 days and maybe an hour, hour and a half of the doctor's time over the course of 3 days, and medication. Those additional things don't add up to the remaining $5,560. Even with the cost of the building, electricity, janitors, it doesn't add up. So why does it cost so much for a 3 day stay without an emergency medical procedure?

[iDisagreedEar]

We stayed 1 day at a hospital and was billed 8k.

Also Physicians make 200-600k/yr, that pays for the school in a year.

[msrenee]

I'm sure there are specialists who make $600k a year. At least around here, primary care docs make around $200k max. Even if they're making $600k, that doesn't even begin to explain why hospital costs are so high. Some napkin math says $600k/year, 52 weeks/year, 40 hours/week is about $288.46 per hour. If you spent 10 hours that day with a very highly compensated doctor, that's less than $3k. So where does the other 5k of that bill come from?