[shazow]

Nearly 100% of people spend some time in a hospital in their lives.

Unless you're claiming that hospitals only gouge some tiny subset of people and are benevolently generous to everyone else, that number is going to be much closer to 100% than 0.1%.

When I lived in the US, I have personally experienced this, even with top-tier insurance--from both ends: I've had insurance decline claims arbitrarily and pass on five-figure costs to me, and I've had hospitals misclaim things. In both cases, I had to spend dozens of hours on the phone to resolve it.

Most people in the US are far less privileged: Their insurance is not as good, and they don't have the luxury of spending dozens of hours on the phone.

It's just a matter of time until you experience this.

[378fho]

> Unless you're claiming that hospitals only gouge some tiny subset of people and are benevolently generous to everyone else, that number is going to be much closer to 100% than 0.1%.

Actually, yes. Doctors and hospitals have relationships. When a hospital is aware that a good referral source referred them a patient, they will try to keep the patient happy to maintain that source of business.

They're very selective about who they try to screw.

Now if you walk in with no referral and no family doctor, then you're their source of profits and the party they'll try to milk.

[seandougall]

> Now if you walk in with no referral

You mean like, say, an ER visit?

Though, actually, the one time I've been referred to the ER by a doctor (he called ahead and everything), the billing was still a shitshow. Insurance delayed paying for months while they tried to work out a way to claim it was a pre-existing condition (this was pre-Obamacare), until the hospital gave up and tried to send me directly to collections for upwards of a quarter million dollars.

Given that most private practices (around here, anyway) usually have lucrative hospital affiliations, the incentive to keep doctors happy by keeping patients happy really doesn't exist.