It's not just this single issue. It's any number of things. The media latches onto a headlline of it's choosing and wont let go of it. Anything that contradicts the "narrative" is suppressed. The entire news media is a farce (and not just game journalism).

I've seen state ratings that have flatly contradicted my own personal first hand experience.

Plus the "price" of American healthcare is potentially a very misleading thing as others (and myself) have already indicated.

The OP was about lack of transparency in billing and quickly got hijacked by eurotrash trying to repeat the same tired media narrative about socialized medicine and American healthcare. This kind of stupidity is how we end up with "reform" legislation that doesn't address the relevant crap.

People that are genuinely poor have a public option to fall back on.

People that are not genuinely poor are merely confronted with services that are as expensive as the consumer products they willingly indulge in without ever considering the implications.

In other words, you have to go to a lot of bother that really shouldn't occur to begin with. ALL billing artifacts should make sense BY DEFAULT. It should not require extra special diligence on the part of a patient (or any other sort of customer) to get a real bill or see what the real costs are.

The fact that this is not the norm is directly attributable to the "someone else will pay for it" mentality.

I used to live smack bang on the delivery border of my local pizza delivery. I lived above a shop opposite the railway bridge, and they would never deliver past the railway bridge.

When you told them the road name, they asked if you were past the railway bridge or not. Say yes, you get no pizza. Seriously. And there was no other takeaway that would deliver to you in the area. Say no, however, and they come and deliver no questions asked even if the driver rings to ask where you are.

One time the driver turned out to be an old guy who'd lived in the same house previously and had the same problems. He never ratted us out, though.

Short-sighted business practice, as it was literally 20 feet or so difference and they had no competitors in that area.

I'm pretty sure that the drug that I am on currently isn't allowed by the NHS because it's too expensive. Although it's not just the UK. Our own "public options" have similar problems where expensive treatments aren't covered either.

If you work in an emergency call centre, most of the calls you get will be genuine emergencies. Though you might get the odd crank, when they start continuing on but acknowledging you ("Ma'am, this is an emergency line", "Yes, please", "Ma'am, we're not a pizza delivery", "No, no anchovies, thanks my husband hates them", "Ma'am, do you have an emergency?", "Yes, how long will it be?" etc.) it doesn't take a genius to work out what's happening.

Sure, you still get drunks, timewasters, etc. but if you even think for a second that there is a problem, you send out units anyway, even if just to avoid a repeat incident.

People are inherently skilled in conveying meaning without saying those particular words. It's a fabulous human skill. Even more fabulous when you can do it without alerting someone else listening in to one half of the conversation as to what's happening.

I have to say, one of the things I've always tried to pre-arrange is the "I'm in trouble call". If you call and use a certain keyword, that's me coming running. If you call and I ask if you're okay and you say "No, dur, I'm being taken hostage", then you're probably fine. If I say "Honestly, are you okay?" and you say "Yes, I'm fine", that's my cue to come running.

Pre-arrange such things with your family. Get a keyword between you. Or a private joke that you can deliberately ruin when you're actually in trouble. Something that others won't notice. Because the guy kidnapping your daughter might actually be that boyfriend she trusted and knows her well and that she has to phone daddy every Monday or he'll get suspicious, so he lets her but listens in. She might need that way to make herself known without anyone else noticing.

She certainly had a terrible choice in that man, but the pizza saved her life!

It gets even better. The doctors that aren't really employees are liable for the actions of hospital employees that they have no control over. The mistakes of a nurse or an anesthesiologist are ultimately on the "outside contractor". He is stuck with the liability and he is stuck paying his own medmal premiums and they are by no means cheap.

That is not "price controls".

That's disallowing hospitals to gouge customers that aren't some large corporation.

Beyond your apparent allergy to individuals being protected under the law, there's the problem of transparency and accuracy that's destroyed by the current hospital billing system. The "rack rate" is a fiction that needs to just disappear.

I am not impressed by the media narrative.

You will have to do better than that.

I have occasionally seen claims such as these contradict my own personal first hand experiences, so I am not sure I would take them on faith. Numbers can be twisted to suit any agenda and make even the most absurd claims seem legitimate.

It also has to be noted that the American poor do actually have a government option to fall back on. It's horrible. That's why many clued in Americans don't want that imposed upon them.

Japan and Germany are specially well suited to welfare programs in general because of their culture. They're not going to abuse it or run amok like Italy or Greece. You can't just rip a social system out of it's cultural context and expect it to just magically work.

What I hear from Canadian patients inspires no envy what so ever.

Sure. That's exactly what we need: less transparency and less patient responsibility. That's just the "perfect" response to an OP that is complaining about the utter lack of accountability or auditability here.

Plus you get the added bonus of no alternative options and no recourse for incompetence and delay.