When you have an accident or an emergency, you are not in a good position to negotiate, you would agree to any price (your life depends on it) that the company ask you. A private company wants to maximize profit, so it would charge as much as it can. I mean, if your need surgery as soon as possible, would you ask to be taken to another hospital 2 hours away and rick to die in transit or would you agree to a higher price but have the surgery at the nearest hospital?
Hospitals charge high prices because they can.
Insurance companies assess risk and exclude the expensive procedures and everything related (the “extras”). Because having loopholes in insurance maximize their profits.
While the aim of those companies is to maximize profits, you would have overcost because they can charge you more. There is no real competition on that market, since you can’t really exchange one hospital for other for urgencies, neither can change one pharma for other if the only medication that would work is that precise patent.
See this case:
The only way to improve attention is to, somehow, to force hospitals to pay for the extra they charge over the competition and force insurance companies to only sell a “cover all” insurance, no exceptions. If insurance companies are forced to cover everything and are only allowed to go against hospitals to recover cost, then insurance companies would police hospitals and pharmaceuticals.
Also, you would need to ban insurance companies from dropping off old people.
Alternatively you could go public like Europe. By the way, Europe also have the “premium” ridiculously expensive option. It just that the regular option work really well and not even rich people bother with it most of the time.
