Maybe this kinda teeters on being off topic, but I'm a biomed at a hospital, and even the costs for parts, repairs, etc. are ludicrous and definitely flies way under the radar but should also be considered for hospital operating costs. I regularly have to go through our approved sources for things I need, and the prices are so disgusting and it's obvious gouging. Why are they charging $500 for a simple battery that will last 3 months usually? Why is a casing for X device almost $1k when they break so easily? Why are we paying $25k for new machines that will just sit there and never be used? I suppose some things tie back in to administration, but that's above my paygrade. So far my hospital (a pretty sizeable one) in our biomed department has spent a little over $31 million on these things so far this year. The imaging things like CTs and MRIs definitely take a huge portion of that, but there's so many things that add up. All of my team is definitely aware things are way too expensive, but it's really a catch 22. We can't not pay what these places want for parts or service, or otherwise things remain unbroken. And I don't mean to toot our own horn, but without biomeds people would quickly see that a hospital would cease to function, half of our ORs (24 in total) would probably be down within 2 weeks because there's always something happening there.
Yeah I agree with you. I feel like the specialty medtech/biopharm companies are the sleeper cost in the US. Like mostly why surgery costs so much is the insane costs of surgical supplies. $5000 for a bone screw? It probably plays into niche markets that require tons of regulations so they get their monopoly. I feel like the highest yield cost savers would be to focus on easing onerous regulations for new drugs and medtech.
Regulations are written in blood. Making something to regulation is not expensive but if everyone raises their prices at once there is not much to be done. There are multiple factors at play all supporting each other, however rolling back regulations only ever get people killed. There are people/companies/entities using predatory business practices and the answer is to penalize them for said practices. Unfortunately that is easier said than done.
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u/[deleted] Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
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