Originally Posted by kane

Many hospitals are publicly funded so when they treat people that don't pay they will need more money and when they are publicly funded that money comes from the public.

If public hospitals were done away with and were all privately owned, but still treated everyone regardless of it if they would pay, guess who would pay? We the regular tax payers. The reason is this: they would need more money and they would get that money by overcharging people with insurance or who are actually going to pay (pretty much all hospitals already do this, but with no public funding the amounts would be even higher) this would cause your insurance rates to go up or if you went in and paid cash the cost would go up. So in the end those with insurance and decent paying jobs would be the ones that would eventually pick up the bill.

If you are going to accept and treat anyone regardless of their ability to pay someone is going to end up paying for it and you can bet it won't be the people that own/operate the hospitals.