> Just being in a hospital bed for one night without anything being done costs $3000/night No, it …

> It costs whatever you can negotiate it to cost That's a really surreal proposition. People who are sick cannot 'negotiate' anything. People who are recently treated and are recovering from an illness are the same. Something that is life-critical cannot be up for negotiation to start with, but lets allow it for argument's sake. What if you 'negotiate' and the hospital and the insurance company just reject? Do you have pockets deep enough to fight with their lawyers for years? Do you have the time? One person against corporate behemoths. That defies logic. > If that were true it would do a good job of maximizing profit It does. It keeps both the availability of doctors and hospital beds to create artificial scarcity. It does vertical integration and ensures that whatever you do in healthcare ranging from getting insurance to going to hospital, from medicines to secondary care stays withi…

> just telling the hospital you haven't got insurance is, again, good for 90+% off by itself. My understanding is that directly charging a different (higher) amount for insurance is considered to be fraud.