Ok, I was not talking about choosing plan. You can compare that to other consumer choices. However, choosing a plan really doesn't matter much in this lady situation and other situation where OON DRs and/or facility are used and you didn't have a choice to NOT use them. I was talking about "choosing" a facility / dr to care for your medical needs.
Ok when you are passed out you can you really make choices? The things that wipe out people is not the random visit to the doctor its stuff like heart attacks and cancer.
If you read the story you know that Obamacare took care of this lady and the SOLE gripe is that her maximum out of pocket didn't apply. The insurance paid the in-network rate for an out of network hospital. She had a major health problem, not a broken leg, racked up 350K at a hospital out of network and is stuck with less than half years salary.
Since we are talking about choices... ER visits are often of emergency nature and you may not have much of any choice as to where to go and who perform procedures. Certainly, you likely don't "shop" around for a "deal". From CDC data: How many ER visits in 2010? 129.8M. Don't know how many of that is real ER, but even a small fraction of that is still a huge number. Consider that 13.3% of those result in hospital admission, probably at least 17M are real emergency.
If the in-network rate is what is fair and reasonable, are the charges in excess of that fair? Should she be responsible for charges she had no choice in making?
