So does anyone here have an answer to the question? What is the mark-up rate that the hospital should commit to? "Well not THAT much" is not an answer -- qualitatively I agree, but the CEO was being asked to commit to a specific number. It was a bad question and I don't blame the CEO for refusing to answer it.

The question gets even worse when you consider he's being asked to construct a ratio of "price charged to customer" against "cost as found somewhere on the Internet". Yeah, that's a fair thing to hold a hospital to.

This lawyer or whatever who keeps asking those questions is awful. Setting up numerous hypotheticals prove nothing. The simple answer is "If the means to obtain the product and implement its use were not at a reasonable preportion to the cost while allowing for profit, then yes I would be shocked. However each item would have to be weighed on its own merit, and I cannot provide a firm price markup figure that could apply to all items fairly. In the case of the item in question, I have no idea what we paid for it originally, and cannot assess the value of the markup."

Or something.

When two assholes rub together...

Yeah the guy asking questions isnt really very good at his line of work. Unless this isn't his job. Maby he was just the janitor or something and he scratched out janitor on his uniform and wrote lawyer underneath that, and it actually tricked people.Still 4 stars though because it seemed to get on this asshats nerves.


A few months back my mother was in the hospital for a little over a day. Thought she was having a heart attack, but it just turned out to be unstable angina. Medicaid was charged ,000.


If anybody is really interested later on I will dig up the statement and post the break down of the charges. It really is amazing.