Comment by glbrew

I agree, I oversimplified for the sake of brevity. I also don't know the details for hospital accounting, only the generals and that it is very complicated. In reality it would be they spend say $1 million on these cases. They could then say it was a public service and take it off their overall income. CDC or other grants might pay the rest depending on the severity of the outbreak. Whatever isn't covered would still be potatoes for most hospitals and worth more in prestige than the hospital could have bought with the cash. Again, I literally saw hospital executives fight over Ebola patients.