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Originally Posted by JohnnyRoyale
To get an asprin to you, they have to have a purchasing department to buy it, an accounting department to pay for it, a pharmacy to dispense the pill, storage to store the bottle the pill is in, a nursing or orderly staff to get that asprin to you, a nurse to give it to you, and a doctor to prescribe it...which is why it costs $25 per pill. And don't forget, all hostpital workers have unions. Including the doctors. They call their union the AMA, but it's the same deal.
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Oh please. Give me a break there. First of all these are OTC drugs that were given to us under the illusion that they were samples. They NEVER told us that the package would cost $60. Otherwise, we would have refused and bought the shit on our own. There was no perscription, no pharmacy was involved in dosing it out, and the drugs were not administered like perscription druges.
The supermarket that sells these drugs has a purchasing department that buys it, an accounting department that pays for it, a stocking department that puts it on the shelf, a cashier that rings it up, and a bagboy that puts it in a bag. Most national supermarket chains have unions too. Despite that, they are able to sell me a bottle of 20 OTC Tylenol pills for about $3 when the hospital sold it to me for $20. Furthermore, at the supermarket didn't tell me "here take this with you so you have them when you get home," implying that they are FREE samples (since they are sample-sized, not full typical packages, and then send me a bill a month later for 6 times the retail price. The supermarket said this item costs you this much and then I am able to evaluate the cost and benefit of buying it there.
You are confusing the other issue also. The hospital is the service provider. They are the example of Best Buy. The hospital is allowed to make deals with certain groups and establish prices with them. Everyone else pays twice as much. The insurance provider and the insured are customers. My insurance divides providers into 'network' and 'non-network'. Network providers are hospitals that they have made pricing agreements with. Best Buy does not have the right to practice price preferencing (or discrimination based on how you look at it) for their products.