I work in the healthcare industry and have a good friend who works at a major hospital. You know what I've learned?
Hospitals have no clue what it costs them to serve an individual patient.
The lowest level where they understand costs is at the service level (e.g. ER, cardiac lab, stroke center). It's one of the reasons why you see all the wonky prices from hospitals: they just "create" prices for individual procedures until it covers their aggregate costs. It doesn't really matter to the hospital if procedure A is $1K and procedure B is $5K. As long as Arate + Brate > costs, they are fine with it.
Hospitals have no clue what it costs them to serve an individual patient.
The lowest level where they understand costs is at the service level (e.g. ER, cardiac lab, stroke center). It's one of the reasons why you see all the wonky prices from hospitals: they just "create" prices for individual procedures until it covers their aggregate costs. It doesn't really matter to the hospital if procedure A is $1K and procedure B is $5K. As long as Arate + Brate > costs, they are fine with it.