You won't get any argument from me that the hospital system needs fixing in the process. You're precisely right that the whole system has a grossly inflated racket going w/ equipment and billing. The same thing is true of billing to insurance companies. Pharmaceutical. This is how the current prices got so inflated.

What you're not realizing, though, is that this is precisely the big-business-ized system the Obama team and the new nationalized plan is going to have to address to cut the very costs you're talking about. The reason they're the only ones who can do that, as opposed to the Rs, is that the current system has grown up at the nurturing of the Rs. You're aware who owns/runs the biggest hospital company in this country, right? Senator-Doctor Bill Frist. It's the Rs who've been gouging these costs all this time and running those bills up for everyone. In order to fatten the bottom lines of the hospital corporations, the pharmaceutical and insurance companies. There is where the racket is. I know what I'm talking about here.

It's going to be hard as hell to fix that, too. The over-billing equip, pharma and hospital bill thing (there are lots of others--entire industries have grown up simply to milk more money out of the current system) is so deeply entrenched in our current system that it's unbelievable. No one on either side of the aisle is going to argue that it's going to be hell to get through the process of changing this, either. It's going to be nasty. (And eventually entire industries will have cropped up to rape the new system, too. That's the sad thing.)

I wish I could stay and explain this a bit longer, but I am on call and have to go stand over a couple of those very beds at, fortunately, a not-for-profit hospital. Will try to get back to this later in the week.

Good thread!!