that will be $500 up front maam

The public doesn't realize something about medicine, about hospitals. It has become a business, a corporate business. The days of the individual hospital fell by the wayside years ago. The vast majority of hospitals are now part of corporate conglomerates. Most hospitals are nonprofit. That gives the public the mistaken impression that they aren't in it for the money. Wrong.

The whole nonprofit thing is a misnomer. Nonprofit means there are no individuals who own stock who make money off the hospital. The profits go back into the organization. Here's the thing, INDIVIDUALS are making huge profits off these nonprofit hospitals: CEOs, administrators, doctors. CEOs or these hospitals often make millions in salary and bonuses. Doctors, especially specialists such as interventional cardiologist, neurologists, surgeons can make several hundred thousand a year easily. You don't think this leads to unnecessary procedures do you? Oh..of course not.

The nonprofit hospitals put the money where they make the money. Where do they make the money? Cardiology, neurology, orthopedics. In other words those profitable angioplasties and other cardiac procedures, strokes and interventional radiology, joint replacement surgery. This is where they put the money and this is where the specialists make the most money. Often times the rest of the hospital, that doesn't make as much money or loses money is left to deteriorate.

Now these nonprofitable hospitals are beginning to hire firms to aggressively seek payment up front of deductibles and co pays. Staff are trained via "scripts" to convince people in ERs, for example, that they have to cough up the money while they are still in triage. The fact that they are sometimes too agressive is front page news in my state after an attorney general investigation.

This is modern medicine folks. Do profits and money and health care mix? What do you think?