[josephg]

> Pretty much all developed countries do fairly well on rapid access to emergency care.

I was talking to a taxi driver in SF a few years ago. He said he was in a car accident once, and his car rolled and flipped upside down. The police & an ambulance showed up. Even though he seemed mostly ok they still wanted take him to hospital. But he couldn't afford the ambulance or the hospital - without health insurance, it would have bankrupted him. So he told them all to get lost.

In telling the story, he got kind of angry about it - I think he was mad how pushy the police and ambulance people were about the whole thing.

Thats vaguely horrifying to me. A man who was just in a car accident should never be put in a situation like this. If you're wealthy in america, yeah - you get top notch medical treatment. But I'm not sure I'd call that a successful system for emergency care.

[nradov]

I'm not claiming it's successful, just that people can generally get rapid access to high quality emergency medical care. Paying for it afterwards is a separate issue, and changes are needed there.

The No Surprises Act did give many consumers significant protection against excessive ER bills.

https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/fact-sheets/no-surprises-unders...