IF
YOU READ the recent healthcare exposé in Time magazine by Steven Brill, you know how ludicrous and
unreasonable hospital costs are.  Prices
for everything from OTC pain pills to bandages to diagnostic tests are inflated
to such an extent that it would shock most people.  Not only that, hospitals routinely turn
unpaid bills over to aggressive debt collectors or sue for full payment.  Surprisingly, it seems so-called non-profit
hospitals rake in huge profits but maintain their tax-exempt status while
paying administrators multi-million dollar salaries.  

In a recent piece for Reuters.com, Brill reflects on
a little-known provision of Obamacare, now a three year old law, that dictates
non-profit hospitals, in order to keep their tax-exempt status, must follow IRS
rules that would, among other things, prohibit them from going after patients
with bill collectors and lawyers in many instances.  Yet the Treasury Dept/IRS has promulgated no
rules to date.  Brill points out that the
IRS took 2 ½ years to even put out a draft of rules.  Then lobbyists for the American Hospital
Association began to whisper in their ears.  Since then, nothing has happened.

The upshot is that three years after the law passed
with great fanfare there remains no protection from hospital lawyers and debt
collectors for the patients least able to pay the ridiculous costs of their
hospital stays. 

So the hospital lobbyists blow smoke in the face of the IRS functionaries, and we're all downwind.