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I'm guessing you tell your clients, "I'm not really the right person to set up WordPress for you. I can do it, but it'll be incredibly expensive. You can probab
by mikeash 8y ago
I'm guessing you tell your clients, "I'm not really the right person to set up WordPress for you. I can do it, but it'll be incredibly expensive. You can probably do it yourself with a good online tutorial."
Hospitals aren't telling their patients, "We're not really the right institution to give you ibuprofen. We can do it if you really want us to, but it'll be incredibly expensive. You can just go buy some at the store for like ten cents." In fact, I bet that even if you have the presence of mind to decline their ibuprofen because you'd rather get your own, they'll strenuously argue against it, or even start treating you as not following medical orders.
In any case, it would be a lot more palatable if they'd charge marginal costs for marginal items, and charge overhead separately. It may well cost them something on the order of $60 to give someone ibuprofen, on average, but it does not cost them $60 more to give one more person ibuprofen. It would be more honest to charge two cents for the pill, and separately charge your fair share of the cost of the staff that obtains, vets, distributes, and administers that pill along with everything else you're getting.
- lolsal 8y agoI think the difference just having a hospital triage you and tell you 'ibuprofen will handle the pain, it's nothing serious' is _already_ worth a boat load of money and peace of mind. I agree with you - it would be really interesting to see honest and transparent itemized bills, with separate items for overhead. I wonder if people would have the same problem with high bills in that case. Probably wouldn't like the total any more, but maybe it'd be easier to understand.
- mikeash 8y agoThat’s definitely worth a lot. But the difference in price between “you just need ibuprofen, pick some up on your way home” and “you just need ibuprofen, so take this pill” should be minimal.