"They charge whatever they want" is only the first half of the American way. The second half is that because its "whatever they want" someone else can cruise on up and "want" to charge $10 less and take all of the business.

The broken part is that they charge whatever they want and then stop anyone else from being able to charge less. If you do the first half, but not the second, its very much not the American way.

Much of the health care system isn't for-profit, but that doesn't stop money from getting spent. When I lived in Chicago, the local hospital was Northwestern Memorial, which is a non-profit hospital attached to a non-profit university. But the university owns literally 5-6 city blocks of prime Chicago real estate (tax free, of course). It's interesting to note that between 1972 and 1994, there was no new construction on the Northwestern Memorial campus. Then in 1999, two huge new buildings went up, then a women's hospital in 2007, a new children's hospital in 2012, and a new outpatient facility is slated to open in next year. These are each $350-500 million high-rise buildings. And these aren't utilitarian buildings of the kind that were pervasive in the 1970's. They're nicer than most F500 headquarters.