I like how this comment acknowledges acute horrific care incidents that essentially makes market based solutions horribly preditatory, but continue describing it anyway as if it's an afterthought
If you had bothered to read my entire comment instead of jumping on one sentence in isolation, you would have gotten to the part where I addressed that in terms of statutorily limiting emergency prices.
When your car is towed involuntarily, the cost can certainly be described as predatory. And yet it's still probably within a factor of two of what you could negotiate on the open market for a planned tow. That's much better than the blowups on medical prices. And the "huge bill" thing is fixed by wider access to insurance, both private and public plans, as well as making it so that insurance companies can't easily cancel or deny coverage. Furthermore, there can be a public payment plan as a backstop for everyone, such that if you do fall through the cracks and get stuck with a huge bill, you're still only expected to pay a certain percentage of your income per year.
For the issue described in the article, single payer would only change the billing bureaucracy from that of health "insurance" companies to the government. The same incentive for hospitals to play the minimum staffing blame game will be there. Only the market dynamic of patients choosing to go elsewhere can raise the standard of care to favor places that employ more than the legally minimum staff. That requires removing barriers to patient choice.
If you're hangry, you can walk into any random grocery store or restaurant and still expect sane prices, because the sheer majority of their business is done less urgently.
