so speaking for myself, but I had a medical provider (medical equipment rental company) falsify my signature. Among other medical billing misadventures. My wife and I both have Ph.D.s I say that not to gloat but to reinforce how broken a system we have.

You asked about consent - I recently had a hospital visit that included an ambulance trip. I was in no condition to provide consent, my wife didn't provide consent, but you better believe we got the bill (well insurance got the bills). That was just the start of the abject scams that exist throughout the medical system.

I needed a wheelchair to leave the hospital and they had me sign one page of something (on an ipad, while I'm high on opioids) and then replicated that signature onto other documents I didn't sign. They, on a recorded phone call, tell me I signed three documents, I note that they are pixel for pixel identical signatures - and that I only have one of the three documents as a hard copy. They still say I owe them $12, well the debt collectors do...I remind them each time they call that they are going to spend more trying to collect this than its worth. Its been sold at least four times.

Since then I have contacted:

* my health insurance company's fraud line - they don't take reports from patients

* state attorney general - no response

* CMS - no response (theory - if they are doing this to me they are doing this to others)

Broadly, from that one accident, I have had a lawyer send letters to two companies, filed suit against one, and simply decided I'm going to ignore 2 bills entirely because they are transparently fraudulent (IMHO). No one - short of an actual lawyer who used words like 'class action' has been any help in getting them to fix things. The other story, my health insurance company is repeatedly uninterested in being overbilled for every physical therapy visit...by hundreds of dollars per visit, across more than 20 visits.

Thats a fun story. Orthopedic surgeon prescribed PT, simplest way is to do PT through the in clinic PT clinic. I go in twice a week for a month and pay my normal PT copay. Then the insurance starts getting really high bills and I get a request for more money. They listed the orthopedic surgeon as providing the PT. I contact the company, they say that is their 'billing policy'. I point out that the orthopedist is not licensed to provide PT, 'thats our policy'. The difference for me is $10 per visit for a specialist rather than normal copay. THe difference for the health insurance was around $300 per visit. I contact my health insurance - they poke aroudn and find out that the orthopedist owns the PT clinic - which 'employs' no physical therapists. The PTs are all employees of a separate corporate entity so it doesn't through any red flags in billing. Insurance ghosts me - literally, I have a case number from the fraud department that they have no record of or notes on.

My wife and I had a conversation today about how we spend, between medical and general life bills, at least 3 hours per month ensuring we are not misbilled, or ripped off, or not provided the services we pay for. We find issues every month. There is a point where this is a generalized business model of fraud on customers and it needs to be stopped - there ought to be criminal charges.