Eleemosynary:
- Relating to charity, alms, or almsgiving.
- Given in charity or alms; having the nature of alms
- Supported by charity [Wiktionary]
Noted in “The Middle Aged Invulnerables (with poll!),” The Geogre, The Daily Kos:
Health care is no eleemosynary transaction (my Henry Fielding word), where prices are listed on a menu board. If you have severe pain above your right hip, in a few inches, warm to the touch, then you will have an appendectomy, and you will discover afterward that the anesthesiologist billed you, and the hospital billed you, and the surgeon billed you, and the internist billed you, and neither you nor they will have any knowledge of whether it is appropriate. After all, you could not have said no, retroactively.
I’m not certain how charity ties in with prices on a menu board, but the balance of the paragraph is a common criticism of market-based medical care – markets demand publicly known prices, among many other things.
