I've spent my whole career working for hospitals primarily dealing with cost data. There's not much incentive to create a sensible pricing structure because ve

I've spent my whole career working for hospitals primarily dealing with cost data. There's not much incentive to create a sensible pricing structure because very few patients actually pay the posted prices. Most revenue comes from the government or insurers, and neither of them give a fuck what you charge for a sling. Hospitals have limited resources, and dealing with insurers is a big enough operation as it is. Most chargemasters are created by multiplying acquisition cost or Medicare rates by some absurd number (typically 8-10) and calling it a day. Frankly, I see this whole thing as a red herring. I get why people get upset about it, but if you ended this practice then the money would just shift somewhere else. Hospitals are mostly non-profits with small margins, so the money has to come from somewhere. Instead of charging 10 times cost for everything they would just dump it all into a generic fee. This kind of stuff isn't actually relevant to the core problem of why healthcare is so expensive in the US. It's definitely not a scrooge mcduck caricature situation. Like I said, most hospitals are non-profits who post their financial statements online. You can probably go look at your local hospital's statements to see what kind of margins they're working with. There are exceptions, but I'd bet they're pretty low.