>>>Do you know what a "hospital chargemaster" is? And you know that the chargemaster procedure is generally only regulated in Maryland and only made public in California? This is a rather important piece of the puzzle here that tends to get overlooked.
>
>LOL. Yes I know a little about Chargemaster. Bill's $15K daily hotel charge will be comprised of inflated Chargemaster charges, but it's not the reason for the inflated charges. In effect Chargemaster is a glorified price list bearing little (no) relationship to the actual costs to the facility. Price lists exist abroad as well, but without the Emperor's clothes meme that sky-high margins are the norm.

We have a for-profit healthcare system operated by large corporations combined with a trickle-down economic policy. Toss in a few lobbyist and some corruption and there you have it. The pharmaceutical companies have just as much control over our government here as the drug cartels in Mexico have over theirs. Title to this thread is "why we need Bernie" - yep this is a reason why.
Senators get talked into making laws for this industry - then they leave government work and go take a job at 10 times the pay as a lobbyist for the same people they just wrote the law for. Rather huge problem yes?

Read this: https://www.propublica.org/article/medicare-drug-planners-now-lobbyists-with-billions-at-stake-1020