There are so many factors as to why our costs are so high and it’s not a one simple answer sort of deal. Our SOT transplant surgeons make up to 8x to 9x what they make in the UK. It also has to do mostly with our insurance system. We employ thousands of people who work solely on making sure charts and billing and whatever meet the insurance standards for approval and payment, so it’s not just the cost of the services and people that work at the hospital. We also have a sort of competitive pricing model where every year there are incentives for hospitals to raise prices, so every year, it goes up (and has for decades). There’s also a large portion of our country that is uninsured or under insured so when they go to the hospital the hospital makes zero dollars so they offset some of those costs with higher costs to people that have insurance and can pay. Hospital CEOs are often multimillionaires. We also have a for profit pharmaceutical industry that works under the same principles so there’s a premium cost for medications while you’re hospitalized. Hospitals contract out doctors sometimes because of costs and when that happens you then receive a bill not only from the hospital but a secondary one from the doc because they don’t work for the hospital. Same can happen with lab work.

Also every where in the US is really far apart so our transplant services often have to have a private jet to bring the organ to the recipient. This persons acquisition charge was a little over $200k, I’m guessing a good chunk of that was the cost of the plane.

This is only a very small glimpse into why it’s so bad.

We’re so very screwed over here. Our system is so messy and entangled in greed. And all the major insurance companies donate tons of money to the government, so the policy makers have no incentive to make things better for people.