this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2026
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A Boring Dystopia
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Look up the cost of life flight. It’s often an entirely separate insurance (ask).
The majority of people don’t understand that there are levels to hospitals. Couple lives near a hospital in a beautiful though remote coastal location, thinks they have it figured out. Oh, but it’s a level 3 hospital. Not many surgeons, just one bone doctor.
One of them has a stroke. Now they need level 1-2, depending. Time is a critical factor, so, life flight. Ditto for a heart attack.
Last check it’s ~$50-60k.
Saw a thread where a father got a 100k bill for a life flight his son needed. Insurance didn't want to pay because they didn't preapprove but it was an emergency so there was no time anyway.
I'm just wondering why every thing in the medical field immediately costs 10x as much as it needs to. Yes, helicopters are expensive to maintain and so is the personnel but 100k per flight is ridiculous. Show me the calculation.
The calculation is, "We have you over a barrel so get fucked, you poor." I took a helicopter flight over Lake Tahoe just for the hell of it earlier this year. The total duration was probably similar to a flight from anywhere within those mountains to the local hospital and in fact we flew right by the hospital when we were still in town. The total cost was a couple of hundred bucks. This was from a private operator, so the profit from that cost had to include his own fuel and time, insurance, plus financing and maintaining his own machine, plus whatever it costs to stable it at the airport. Nobody is subsidizing him, and no municipality is giving him a cushy tax break, either.
So there's no way in any rational universe that a helicopter flight to the hospital should cost more than a thousand, maybe two thousand dollars even accounting for the payroll of everyone on that bird and all the other expenses, plus a fat 200% profit margin.
Because capitalism.
Right? I had an MRI to check on my ear. It took 30-40min all said and done. $28k. 100% covered by insurance.
That tech is getting paid $60-$75/hr. There’s the machine, which is always on. Then there’s the doc who reads it. Some paperwork filings in the chart.
That’s probably 1hr of tech pay, after cleaning / set up. Radiologists make ~$300/hr per salary on average.
So, after the $375 for hands on personnel, and the electric bill, I don’t know what whimsy created the $27,625.
Per the search bot, 165-226 kWh per day for the MRI being on.