> Hospitals over-bill persistently and excessively to the point where hospital billing charges have ceased to have much meaning beyond their ability to shock an

> Hospitals over-bill persistently and excessively to the point where hospital billing charges have ceased to have much meaning beyond their ability to shock and frighten people. The > While Medicare and Medicaid control their costs by tying their payments to the actual cost of medical services, private insurance companies appear to be just paying a fixed percentage of what they’re billed. That alone gives hospitals a strong motivation to inflate their billing charges by more each year independent of their costs.