I doubt hospitals have cost accounting systems sophisticated enough for them to have any idea what the cancer treatment costs, just as Verizon doesn't know how

I doubt hospitals have cost accounting systems sophisticated enough for them to have any idea what the cancer treatment costs, just as Verizon doesn't know how much it costs for you to talk on the phone for fifteen minutes. Just because they billed $250,000 doesn't mean that's what it cost or even that they ever expected to actually receive $250,000. Besides, apparently the goal of universal healthcare was to allow everybody to still receive the "$250,000" cancer treatment that they were getting before universal healthcare. This suggests that both with and without universal healthcare, the cancer treatment was being provided, so not having universal healthcare did not actually create another cost. This isn't trivial nitpicking: the ACA was sold as something that would reduce costs. This was mostly false. The real aim of the ACA was to raid the pockets of more people. Before, there was a "$250,000 cancer treatment" and the insured paid for it with a "$17 ibuprofen." The true objective of the ACA was to keep the "$250,000 cancer treatment" but instead pay for it by raiding the pockets of young, healthy people who previously did not have insurance. It turns out that raiding the pockets of young, healthy people is not so politically popular. They didn't have insurance for a reason--it's expensive! Their unemployment and student debt is already high, and they already have to pay for old people through Social Security and Medicare tax. Yet the ACA wanted to use those young people, who would pay premiums, use little health care, and thus help pay for more "$250,000 cancer treatments". Now this political dishonesty is blowing back, as the insurance markets are under strain because the young healthies still aren't getting insurance to help pay for the cancer treatments that others get.