This thread is actually about the prescribed medicine to a patient confined in the hospital. We have so many experiences in buying the prescribed amount of medicine only to be changed next day. There was this medicine for the liver that the doctor prescribed to my mother-in-law when she was hospitalized. The prescription was for 18 packets of that chocolate powder which was very expensive. Compounding the problem is the availability of the medicine, we scoured the city before we found a pharmacy selling that. Fortunately we ran out of cash so we bought only 5 packets. On the following day, after consuming 3 packets, the doctor cancelled the prescription... it's not needed anymore.
Do you have to buy the prescribed medicine when someone is in the hospital? That's not the case here. After you leave you may have to but not while you are hospitalized.
Prescription drug prices are ridiculously manipulated, in my opinion. Back when I needed B.P. medicine, we bought, in Mexico, the identical product I received in U.S., sealed in exactly the same packages, made in New Jersey, printed in English, not Spanish. Cost here: almost a dollar per tablet. In Mexico: 6 cents. Something was fishy, I saw.
General practice in the United States is to charge according to procedure codes rather than for specific items that are used. In other words, when a particular procedure is performed, the hospital will charge for the items that would normally be used during that procedure whether or not they were actually used. Since most hospital bills, if they are paid at all, will be paid by an insurance company or government program, patients seldom question the specifics of a bill. If they were to do that, they would probably find that they are billed for several things that were never used. In other words, if I refuse anesthetic for a procedure where anesthesia would ordinarily be used, I might find that I was charged for it anyhow.