>>What is the best answer to the "emergency care competition" that you've found?
Pay what the insurance or medicare pays, plus a capped xx% because they got a volume discount. By law hospitals have to stabilize you, can't let you die, money or no money. (I know they have been cases of trying to dump patients but...)
So you saved me, but how did you come up with the $455,000 bill? We entered into a contract without prices, so the prices should be customary. 5-10X what insurance pays isn't fair.
You could do limited supply side bidding and some of that already happens, but proximity to care matters so much that I think structuring it like all the other emergency services (such as police and fire) is probably the right way to go. Urgency is the only maximizing function.
Public utility, no competition for emergency given how it works. Nose job or breast implants are another thing. Emergency prices linked to Medicare.
But then, I can imagine them charging, say, $3800 to stabilize you with whatever surgery (there goes the urgency) and start billing you normally for the rest of the care. They'll make it back and then some.
Pay what the insurance or medicare pays, plus a capped xx% because they got a volume discount. By law hospitals have to stabilize you, can't let you die, money or no money. (I know they have been cases of trying to dump patients but...)
So you saved me, but how did you come up with the $455,000 bill? We entered into a contract without prices, so the prices should be customary. 5-10X what insurance pays isn't fair.