Market competition is fine, but corporations are specifically obligated to focus on profits over other considerations, and in this case that is inappropriate and creates perverse incentives. Consider people like in the OP who have cynically bought in (or are in some retirement fund that bought in on their behalf) and now their financial wellbeing depends on hospitals continuing to be allowed to extract significant money out of people. Are they going to vote for candidates pushing actually effective measures to reduce how much people pay for medical care, if that means the stock will go down? Probably not.