i'm glad the medical side tries to stay focused on patient care. i've a friend in Mexico where they check ability to pay before any treatment begins. she was bleeding out and they waited until after her card was verified before doing anything. lower costs, maybe. One thing that being married to an RN has taught me, the billing department sends insanely inflated bills which are step 1 in their insurance negotiation. I got a bill for over $600,000, I laughed while still in the hospital bed. bill got negotiated down to $150,000. Even if there is a ginormous bill, you can postpone threatened collections by sending them anything, like $10/month. it will reset their billing escalation cycle. debts more than 7 years old will get written off. if all else fails, bankruptcy isn't all that bad. shuffle assets to trusted family. the amount of money they waste on greedy negotiations far eclipses any actual cost for treatment. don't stress over the bills. stress kills. let some fat lawyer worry about not getting a new car this year.

Not germane. Zurich Insurance Group is not a USian medical insurance company.

Bread and circuses still works.

Around 50 years of near constant propaganda from our media convincing people that the government paying for anything is destructive to the economy and that taxing rich people more that poor people is not fair.

Arguing the care wasn't covered because the baby wasn't named in the insurance despite explicitly covering pregnancy-related care is ghoulish behavior. I can't fathom how you can argue that seriously and not feel like a piece of shit.