The ER charged him $6,589.77 for 6 stitches, cost that led his wife to avoid ER

I'm in the US.

* I paid $20 K out of pocket for a surgery that my insurance would not cover.

* A few weeks after surgery, I developed a complication that left me in HORRIFIC pain several hours / day.

* Almost immediately after development of complication, I got ANOTHER $20 K bill from the hospital.

* I read the fine print on my contract, "HOLY SHIT. THEY CAN DO THIS????"

* Meanwhile, horrific pain persists, day after day.

* Wife says, "You need to go to ER."

* Me: "NO WAY. You wanna get hit with ANOTHER $20K bill because I developed a complication due to a procedure that the insurance refused to cover from the get-go? I'll ride this out."

* Horrific pain persists. I cancel a lot of my work.

* A few weeks later, I have a follow-up visit with surgical group.

* I tell surgical group, "I got this $20 K bill ON TOP of the $20K I already paid."

* Surgical group: "Oh. That's a billing error."

* I explain very s-l-o-w-l-y that I did not deal with my horrific pain for WEEKS as a direct result of receiving an erroneous bill and that there may be a lawsuit coming someone's way.

* 15 minutes after leaving my follow-up visit, I got 3 phone calls from hospital admins and surgeon expressing profound regret for the error and assurances that the bill was "gone."

If I could leave the US, I would for this simple reason.

2) similarly, most drug developments and research are done in the US. EU is effectively leeching off of the US policies. I’d say even Japan by itself contributes more to that end, per capita and in aggregate, than EU as a whole.

3) whenever people marvel at quality of life in countries such as Denmark, Sweden, etc, you have to ask yourself how they got there. None of that is free and other people are indirectly paying for those privileges. In most cases, it’s third world countries that Europeans pillaged for centuries. And in modern times, it’s on the backs of American taxpayers and soldiers who fought to save EU on multiple occasions from their own selfish and inept policies.

Also, while $/CPT code can go down, you can see more patients/day or alter your staffing ratios and other operating metrics to more than compensate.

Healthcare has some of the most "woo woo" hand wave-ey financial metrics around. Do a private equity quality asseatment on quality of earnings on "gross earnings" in most health care settings. Other than the Enron consolidations there can't be a more bullshit financial metric (heck entire area) under US GAAP than gross earnings. With that level of obfuscation (purposefull or not) it's no wonder you have almost full opacity into the cost chain.

Unrelated but I was also audited a similar amount due to clerical error by robinhood + irs. Unnecessarily complicated laws designed to screw 99% of us are working.