This is why you could never be elected; for the love of god, man, how 'bout those death panels! ;-)

RTFA, she states the real dollar cost was ~250K of which they were personally responsible for about 10K.

This is naive. Do we also apply this rationale to auto mechanics, window cleaners, lawyers and all other corners of our economy? Hospital and physicians often offer lower prices to certain insurers who can guarantee a certain volume of business. An example: If I run a surgery center and I know that an insurer will bring me 200 cholecystecomies (gall bladder removal) a year to be done in my center I can buy supplies in bulk (less cost, except in your world where everyone pays the same all the time), I can hire the appropriate extra personnel to be available to do the procedures and I can schedule time in advance in the operating rooms. All of this saves significant money. I then pass some (if not most) of those savings on to the insurer who is guaranteeing me a minimum level of business. The price I give the insurer is less than the cost of providing the procedure on an ad-hoc basis, so if I was required to bill every one the same, I would lose money on many of the procedures. Now, I am a fan of medical cost transparency, but eliminating the ability of providers to negotiate their fee structures with payers is lose-lose scenario.

Yes it does. This article is excellent. This widow asks more probing questions about the economic underpinnings of our broken medical system than our leaders do while trying to overhaul it. RTFA-A(gain).

It is not free!!!!!! Repeat after me, "quality health care is not free." Even though you want to think it is and it appears so from your (and most other citizens') point of view. The economic costs of providing medical care are real, and cost benefit trade offs do have to be made. In a truly socialized system such as in Sweden those trade off decisions are made by government agencies establishing what care will and won't be paid for. The basis is usually a balance between compassionate availability of care for the sickest patients and wise use of funds to wring the maximum population benefit per dollar (or krona) spent. In the US system we make those decisions based on less rational criteria; for non-emergent care it is based on whether or not you can pay, in emergency situations hospitals and doctors are required by law to deliver care without regard for ability to pay until the emergent problem is resolved. This perverse system provides crazy incentives for the way care is provided and our current mess. But I digress. The point is that health care is expensive, even in systems where it has the appearance of being free, there are complex decisions being made on how to muster economic resources so that you can get care.

Who pays the bill in your scenario? It is easy to say it's the patients choice, and if the patient is paying the bill no problem. The problem becomes when we socialize the financial risk of serious medical illness (either through government run programs like Medicare and Medicaid, or through premiums paid to private insurance corporations). Now other people are fitting the bill! That is what this whole article is about. Patients often make different decisions on proceeding with care based on whether they or some third party is fitting the bill. I've seen it first hand more times that I can count. Treatment A has a 10% chance of giving you 6 more months but costs $10,000. If a third party is paying 80-90% of patients jump at the chance. If it is out of their pockets (even in patients who can afford that kind of money) this rate drops significantly.

NO, this is exactly why the patent trolls can get away with this. You are correct about the patent game between "real" companies. But the patent troll companies aren't real. They don't produce anything except for lawsuits, so IBM can't counter-sue them!