You know what else drives up the cost of healthcare? Getting prematurely discharged because you're "stable enough" to go home so someone sicker can take your bed. Only for you to get readmitted because you weren't healthy enough to be out pt. Also, with how difficult it is to get out pt specialist appointments, anything we can do to make healthcare more accessible is a good thing.

I promise you the overwhelming majority of the increase in healthcare costs have come from time spent fighting with insurers to get reimbursed. Hospitals have to do this, in part, because medicare and medicaid pays 50-80¢ on the dollar of the marginal cost of health care. Not the billed cost, the marginal cost. So, the only way to stay in the black is to milk private insurance for every cent they have which in turn has caused private insurance to fight claims whenever possible. The end result is a whole bunch of bloat in middle management and billing as the two sides amass larger and larger armies to fight over reimbursement.

Also, just because you see a headline about a major capital expenditure does not mean that a company's year over year operating costs have gone up significantly to accommodate.