Customers are a captured entity.
Meaning they have lost the power to bargain.
Although for the most part you never really had a choice anyhow.
Get t boned by a drunk driver and have both of your legs crunched to paste and suffer severe internal damage, you're going to the nearest hospital, no if ands or butts. You're not going to look up how much each hospital charges for reconstructive orthopedic surgery and exploratory chest surgery to close the 11 internal bleeds you're experiencing. Nor are you even able to say "naa, 2.6 million dollars is too much for me, take me to county general instead, they gave me a quote for 1.9 million". You're unconscious and dying. You can't agree to anything.
But alas, when you wake up, 2 weeks from now they will gladly charge you 880 dollars per Motrin 800 pill. They will gladly negotiate your 7.7 million dollar medical bill (you were in the ICU for 13 days after all and everyone knows it costs hospitals 500,000 A day to have someone in the ICU) down to just 1.4 million dollars. When you explain that you only make 24,000 a year and can't pay they'll gladly set up a payment plan of 500 dollars per month until you die, upon which the remaining assets of your estate will be seized by the hospital to recoup what ever is left the 30.5 million dollars you owe on that hospital visit from 46 years ago. 6% on 1.8 million dollars annually is a hell of a lot more than 500 a month don't ya know.
But hey. America is the land of the free and the home of the brave. We all know that the glorious hedge fund managers who own these hospitals really really need their 17th Bentley and their 4th island in the carribean. How else are they to spend the 60 million a year bonus they get for increasing shareholder value by 11% this year!
I personally want the republicans to vote in Cruz or bush. I want them to repeal the ACA. I want women to be denied breast cancer treatments again because they didn't tell the insurance company about a yeast infection they got 15 years prior.
I want the republicans to repeal EMTALA. I want to see people bleeding out on the streets outside of hospitals because they forgot their insurance cards at home and couldn't prove they could pay for the millions of dollars of health care they were about to receive.
At least then America will finally see what a shit show American health care is.
Frankly if you're a doctor or a nurse or a pa or what ever I don't know how you can live with yourself. Does it feel good that the vast majority of the people you treat will seriously have to consider bankruptcy after visiting you? It would eat me up inside knowing that I just saved the life of a guy who as soon as he saw my bill killed himself (happens about 200 times a month).