I don't blame you for it, since it's long, but I don't think you read the entire article, let alone the second page. I also don't think you actually understand how hospitals bill insurance companies. I'm not saying insurance companies are great: they are not. But their profit margins are substantially smaller than these "non-profit" hospitals featured in the article. Hospitals don't send a high bill to an insurance company, and then play a game of who pays what. All the rates are pre-negotiated. The second page clearly states that insurance companies, when they pre-negotiate, want to do so from the Medicare price as a starting point. Hospitals want to do so from their exorbitantly inflated "chargemaster" central pricing table. As hospitals and clinics have consolidated, they have increased their leverage over insurers so that they can force the insurers to pay far more than they used to.
>>But their profit margins are substantially smaller than these "non-profit" hospitals featured in the article.
Every time you hear non-profit anything, run from it like you run for your life.
These days a non-profit organization means, the organizations gets to make no profit but the people who run it, take the profit on the organization's behalf.
