This is a critical statement from the article, "Data from California illustrate how hospitals have exploited this situation. From 2002 to 2016, total billed cha

This is a critical statement from the article, "Data from California illustrate how hospitals have exploited this situation. From 2002 to 2016, total billed charges by hospitals rose by a staggering $263 billion, to $386 billion, even though the number of patients admitted did not increase.". That feels like statistical butchery. Two immediate things come to mind. Obesity has skyrocketed in the US between those time periods and thus more people are going to be facing more severe and more expensive health issues. How much of the cost is due to increased severity of issues? And second, does that account for inflation? Inflation alone, which increased 33% between 2002 and 2016, would explain the cost differences if that was not adjusted. Though also why in the world would the number of people admitted not increase even though the population grew substantially in that time period? I tried to answer these questions myself, but the link provided in the article just leads to dozens of links to other PDFs, which also inspires some skepticism. It would be nice if they specified exactly where they information came from. There's also a third possible issue. In the US all public emergency rooms are required to treat and care for individuals regardless of whether or not they can pay. I have no idea how the billing for this works behind the scenes, but it's likely hospitals are recouped for most/all of these costs from the government. However, that would indeed create a huge incentive to charge as much as they could while also providing as expensive of care as possible. Not dissimilar to how government guaranteed student loans have created an incentive for universities to charge as much as they possibly can. In any case if the number of people utilizing this 'benefit' increased, we'd also expect to see a change in costs. Articles like this just make me think of that old quote, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."