alt Hacker NewsI had an accident where I had a concussion and other injuries that put me in a lot of, and the people I was with called an ambulance for me, and I wasn't really in a state to decline, but if I had been, and knew how much it would cost, I would have. The ambulance ride was, of course, out of network. As were some of the doctors that treated me once I got to the hospital. It was the first time I dealt with a major medical expense as an adult, and it came as quite a shock when the bills came several months later, that said I was responsible for about $10,000 for the ambulance (plus a lot more for the hospital), and a good chunk of it didn't even count towards my deductible because it was out of network. I later learned I should have contested that since it was an emergency, and insurance is supposed to cover out of network service in an emergency, but I was young and inexperienced with dealing with health insurance companies. Oh, and it was about a 10 minute ambulance ride.
I guess my point is, sometimes you don't have a choice, but you still end up with a massive bill. And also, that experience definitely had a chilling effect on me calling 911.
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Can't you simply argue: I never agreed to this, so I'm not obliged to pay this?
Americans love to pretend that healthcare can somehow be a free market (it can't), but a free market requires voluntarily entering into a transaction. Costs that can be forced upon you without your agreement need to be tightly regulated and subject to clear caps.
Being concussed should count as not being fully aware. And making someone pay something that he was made to accept while not fully aware should be denounced as a scam.
As someone who is not American, $10,000!!!!!! That's hard to conceive where I live. We even have a specifically free ambulance service here.
This is exactly the part that makes "you can always refuse" feel a bit theoretical
Treating medical care like this, similar to a racketeering scheme, should not be a thing anywhere.
Instead of punishing people for seeking medical care (or plainly requiring it), it would be preferable to have a robust protocol for rejecting patients that do not require care, whether at the hospital or before the ambulance ride.
For this, people would need to want medical care be a humanitarian right and basic pillar of a functioning society, not a business or a bureaucratic system to perform a selection process decreasing the life expectancy of less-affluent people.
Ironically, when there is free medical care and universal insurance, there are also perverse incentives. For example unneeded expensive procedures, prescribing patented, newer drugs where cheaper ones would work, providing ineffective or even detrimental services, etc.
But humanitarian values are out of fashion, because they were never achieved globally.
So the only right people care about increasingly is their right to own property.