I find it richly ironic that there is a vendor site Health Care Blue Book found through linked article that purports to offer pricing transparency, but are very opaque on the pricing of their own services for the full reports.
I think I broke my irony meter.
High praise, but:
Psssh!
Your own oratory skills are quite renowned, plus you have that additional virtue which I sorely lack; patience.
If you are billed full freight and don’t pay, they’ll sell your bill to a collection agency, which may in fact also not collect, but they can ruin your credit and make your life hell. The worst thing is, the sky-high prices tend to get shoved onto the most vulnerable people.
But why do this shit in the first place? Why make gullible / innocent / vulnerable people learn how to obtain sharp elbows and wits, how to ask the right questions, how to call their bluff on not taking prescribed medication, and so on just to avoid being gouged (and just so the hospital can manage to bilk a few suckers). You can defend it all you like insofar as it can be avoided, but it SHOULD NOT HAVE TO BE!
Which is what motivated my post above, too.
It is not merely “allowed” to exist, the people who need it the most are actively fighting to make it worse.
So this is an interesting double bind. Legally, you can’t consent to anything if you’re under duress. For example, if I hold a gun to your head, and offer you a contract, that contract can’t be valid because you were under duress when you signed it.
But consent can be established by action, such as going to a hospital or emergency room (it’s called “implied consent”). A contract is established by presenting yourself for treatment and being treated. Even under duress, you’re legally consenting to everything, including price.
Note that in this case the “most vulnerable people” are not the indigent or working poor on Medicaid, nor are they those whose income is below the limits of the hospital’s charity care policy (One element of the ACA which has not been challenged is the requirement that every hospital have and publish its charity care charge reductions.
The most vulnerable are, not surprisingly, middle and working class patients who have no insurance (or an Obamacare “bronze plan” with sky high deductibles) and who make too much money to qualify for assistance.
Are you under the impression that Medicare has no deductibles or copays?
So what happens if you refuse to pay? you go in for emergency services that are so important that they don’t even make you sign anything before saving your life. I mean the line between I can save your life but only if you give me your wallet and I will kill you if you don’t hand over your wallet is pretty thin for most social sentient beings.
Court judgements, bailiffs, debt recovery, credit record ruined, bankcruptcy? (Just guessing.)
You really have no idea how appalling it is until you have to live in this system. When my father was diagnosed with the cancer that would eventually kill him*, my parents weren’t sure if his insurance would cover the treatment at the hospital where he was receiving it. His doctor suggested that he get the treatment and then immediately sell the family home and move to another country to avoid paying the bills that would financially destroy them. His doctor! Thankfully, the insurance did end up covering it, as being bankrupted was the last thing my grieving mother needed. My parents were lucky, unlike so many, in that they had decent insurance. But that “luck” still meant unnecessary stress at the most stressful of times.
*I say “eventually,” but it actually happened quite quickly after diagnosis. Despite having decent insurance, it took forever to get to see an oncologist, long after it was clear he had cancer. Before then, he was sent to a series of other specialists (who were available) who misdiagnosed his cancer. So he ended up dying of a cancer that’s usually one of the more treatable. Conservatives like to scare people with the claim that socialized medicine leads to deadly wait times for essential services, so we shouldn’t have it here. The irony being that we already have those waits, and the hospitals bankrupt your family after they kill you.
Debtors (for profit) prison 
“Jeez, this seems pretty vitrio-… no, no it’s dead-on fucking accurate.”
As an American I can’t help but laugh when Canadians try to tell me their healthcare system ain’t so great. Like they had to pay $50 for a prescription one time, or they were charged $100 for an ambulance ride to the hospital.
Honestly that’s fairly bad for socialized healthcare. I don’t think I’d pay a cent for that here (it’s paid collectively, so I do pay for it, but in taxes). But, that’s a very minor detail.
Okay, but we’re not comparing socialized medicine with other socialized medicine.
Here in America, I had a work buddy who slipped a disc at work. He did have insurance. He needed to go to the hospital via ambulance because we couldn’t safely move him.
2km in an ambulance: $1600
Insurance absolutely refused to pay a cent for that. This is under the ACA. Ambulances aren’t medical care.
Observing it from the outside, the US health care system seems to be closer to a socialist command economy than many “socialized” health care systems elsewhere. If there are so many profits to be made, why don’t competitors move in an offer cheaper but still outrageously expensive services?
The US system lacks competition. It is too socialist. Thats the problem.
