• Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    The fact that there are still no caps on medicine costs in America baffles me. And I am an american, do you have any idea how much a single bag of saline cost to produce? I’m not even sure it’s $5, but that won’t stop them from charging you thousands on the bill when you leave the hospital.

    • J12@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s absolutely insane what they charge. Another example is an MRI

      I had an MRI done a few months back. I took probably max 30 minutes of the machine’s time. My bill was $5000. Fortunately insurance covered all but $200, but collectively it raises all of our insurance rates when a hospital charges $5000 for an hour test.

      I did some math. A new MRI is 1 million to 3 million dollars. We’ll go on the upper end of 3 million.

      Let’s say they do 8 MRIs a day.

      They make $40,000 a day per MRI A 5 day work week they bring in $200,000/week $800,00/ month

      That MRI is paid off in 4 months.

      I get there’s other expenses. Rent is a few thousand a month. The techs probably made $20 a piece while I was there. There’s definitely maintenance on the machines. But come on? $5,000 for an MRI?

      Let’s go a little deeper and see why the actual machines are so expensive. Are they actually that expensive or is GE, Siemens, Phillips making a huge markup?

      I don’t hate capitalism like a lot on here, but I believe our needs health, education, housing, electricity needs to be highly regulated and it should not be for profit.

      Also sorta unrelated but not really, but I love bringing up that Corporations should not own single family housing.