Originally Posted by
jfsully
Hospitals do not have the luxury of not providing services to non-paying "customers," and they should be reimbursed appropriately for their work. Caring for patients in an ICU is very costly due to expensive equipment and staffing, and they're paying a lot of overtime to nurses intrepid enough to stay on the job. The critical care part of this will probably be break-even at best for hospitals. The shutdown of "elective" procedures, however, will be financially devastating to hospitals, and I would expect to see a wave of hospital closures after this. Anyone who sees this as a hoax-for-profit on the part of hospitals and doctors hasn't looked at the whole picture. Hospitals have invested in remote field-hospitals to care for the big wave of patients, and they will be out some decent bucks if that wave doesn't materialize. I don't put it past hospitals, like any business, to try to financially capitalize on something like this, but it's going to be tough for them to make money here. And if they wanted to concoct a scam, they have perfected many other better ways to do it than this. I'm sure I'm missing some small angle, though, which is why I will never make it as a hospital administrator.