They deserve to make a profit, free market. Currently if you needed a hip replacement, you could not receive cost of services outlined, and then shop for a better deal from other hospitals. This is where regulations are needed. Regulating hospitals/providers to quote prices would create competition and lower prices, among other rational regulations.
The government dictating what a private business can charge is a dictatorship type government. We're would it stop? McDonald's can only charge $2.50 for a big mac. How much tax payer money would be spent for the government study to determine how much McDonald's should charge for a Big Mac? Let's regulate the price of lumber to lower home prices, or JC Penny on Levi jeans? Businesses survive on competition and free market, not government pricing. The government could destroy businesses causing mass closures once they get their foot in that door.

There is, nor can there be, a "free market" in medical CARE when the providers under the FEE For Service financial system can control DEMAND.

Do providers really need really need more money? It is illegal for a provider to charge medicaid a higher fee for the same medical procedure.

Return to 1980 INSURANCE premiums? LOL! To the best of my memory they were ridiculously high, even back then. Health INSURANCE is a ripoff.

Goddamn, why don't you people do some reading!? Obamacare DID NOT reduce what they paid providers. THEY REDUCED THE HIGHER REIMBURSEMENT RATES TO PRIVATE MEDICARE PLANS, LIKE MEDICARE ADVANTAGE, THE WERE RIPPING THE TAXPAYERS OFF!

There is, nor can there be, a "free market" in medical CARE when the providers under the FEE For Service financial system can control DEMAND.

Do providers really need really need more money? It is illegal for a provider to charge medicaid a higher fee for the same medical procedure.

Return to 1980 INSURANCE premiums? LOL! To the best of my memory they were ridiculously high, even back then. Health INSURANCE is a ripoff.

Goddamn, why don't you people do some reading!? Obamacare DID NOT reduce what they paid providers. THEY REDUCED THE HIGHER REIMBURSEMENT RATES TO PRIVATE MEDICARE PLANS, LIKE MEDICARE ADVANTAGE, THE WERE RIPPING THE TAXPAYERS OFF!

I've read it. It could possibly work if everyone bought into it even if they didn't need insurance or if they could do better n their own. Add to that what it did to private health insurance (doubled the cost) and it gets worse.

Bottom line, you can't cover pre-existing conditions and not expect the cost to sky rocket.

Thus, Ocare needs to be dropped and the move to single payer, modeled directly after the Canadian system, needs to begin.

Sorry, conservative OPP's. It's the future, period. Our freedom will remain.

Not true EL. The government is the ONE payer that CAN control costs. Health CARE works nothing like other market transactions, there is no free market of supply and demand in health CARE. Economics 101 teaches that as supply goes up, costs should come down. But this tenant doesn't hold true in medical CARE – not when the supplier also controls demand. In health CARE, doctors can stimulate demand because (a) health INSURNCE blinds most patients to the costs of services and (b) patients often don’t know whether a complex procedure is as necessary as a non-invasive one. As a consumer, you are a bystander to the real action, which takes place between providers—hospitals, doctors, labs, drug companies, and device manufacturers—and the private and governmental entities that pay them. Those same providers are also pushing Americans into newer and more expensive treatments, even when there’s no evidence they’re any better.

When Medicare is paying the bills, prices tend to be lower. Medicare is by far the largest single source of revenue for most health CARE providers, which gives it more leverage to set prices. Private insurance companies and providers, on the other hand, bargain head-to-head over prices, often savagely.

Private, for profit health INSURANCE wants the cost of health CARE to be high. As compared to Medicare, the amount of administrative complexity associated with private, for profit health INSURANCE billing is huge and requires the providers to employ large numbers of people. Hospitals and physicians spend a huge amount of time generating information to convince private, for profit health INSURANCE companies to pay them. Patients aren’t usually aware that more than half of the time doctors or nurses spend at work is used to document what they do, for billing, and of course, to cover their asses. These days it is primarily on a computer. The majority of it is to prove to private, for profit health INSURANCE companies that they did what they were supposed to do. There are also many employees hospitals or a clinic who are employed primarily to communicate with private, for profit health INSURANCE companies in order to be paid. I’ve heard it estimated that 50 percent of human hours in a hospital is devoted to billing. For proof of this look how full a hospital's employee parking lot is during the week and how empty it is on weekends.

Canada and France, both of whom have systems that provide health care for every citizen at a cost that is far lower than that in the US, use single payers. This makes billing incredibly simple and actually possible for a doctor to do him or herself quickly and without help. A single payer system could negotiate with providers of health CARE services, setting prices and examining new technology based on its costs and benefits. Transitioning to a Medicare for All sytem is the only answer to controlling skyrocketing health CARE costs and providing every US citizen with quality health CARE at an affordable cost.