> I disagree with you 100%, and halfway think you're joking.

This is because you don't have very well practiced thinking skills. The best you can manage is to be shocked at the idea, and then to refuse to think it through. Worse, you then turn around and believe that whatever dumbass projection your small mind can come up with is some sort of reasoned extrapolation of the idea.

You're barely able to anticipate how other singular individuals can and will react. Imagining millions of other people's reactions in aggregate is simply beyond your capabilities.

If everyone has to pay out of pocket, and if you're a doctor selling health care... you can either sell it at a price they can afford or you can starve. Most doctors I know don't like to starve, it conflicts with their beliefs that they're well to do.

No bank is going to loan someone $500,000 for a liver transplant either, they're not even going to loan you $20,000 for an appendectomy.

Nor can the doctor lower prices to 90% of what they are currently... when people talk about the incredibly high prices, they're not saying "it needs to be 90% of what it is now". When I say "lower" we're talking about significantly lower, something where you could hope to afford it.

But you can't see that. You're just too dim.

> You seem to make this out to be an outcome of "borderline fraudulent" doctors.

And this particular issue raised in the link, that's what it is. Some guy he never heard of shows up while he's out of it on painkillers, and then sends a $120,000 bill weeks later. The insurance company caves, pays the whole thing, letting him (and others that are aware of it) that they can continue to do this.

It's not a price transparency thing. That happens when either the company providing the service can't know beforehand how much it will cost, or refuses to estimate. But after the bill comes in, no one, not even the customer, is going to say "this price is absurd". Instead, they say "dammit, it really does cost about that much, but it hurt me because I couldn't prepare for the price".

They're saying "This price is absurd, it's unfair, and no one can even tell me what it is I'm paying for if I pay this bill".

That's fraud.

Worse, I believe that for the most part, the doctors don't even see it as fraud. They feel like they're doing what they have to earn the income they deserve, and that this is no big deal.

> shows your lack of understanding for the system as a whole

No, it proves my understanding. Fuck, you can't even be bothered to explain how it's wrong, you're just doing the "don't you dare besmirch their good name". Which might be a moving argument, if we were talking about someone specific. We're not.

And the industry itself, and this practice in particular, is rotten. It stinks.

> Do you think the high price is because doctors are looking to make enormous profits?

Fuck no, and that's horrible. These doctors aren't driving gold-plated Ferraris and buying 2000ft long mega-yachts. In some cases they feel forced to do this. In some cases, they're paying so much on the new building for their practice or whatever, that if they didn't do this they'd go under. In others lifestyle creep has them paying what they feel are reasonable prices so that the wife can go to the resort spa once a month and the kids get their cheese-tasting lessons and all that snooty shit, and it constantly costs them more even while they feel like they're treading water.

This can't be justification for any reasonable person.

> Who percentage of doctors do you think get fabulously wealthy, anyway?

They don't have to, fool. This can happen even while they feel like they're just a bit into the upper part of the middle class.

> The high price is driven by many things

None of which you understand. You're incapable of it.

I understand it perfectly, and I've proposed a single simple solution for it (even if it is politically unviable).

> The high price is driven by many things, and you've focused on the one of the smallest.

Yes, I have. I've found the one tiny piece that if removed, the entire logjam goes away. It all unravels with this. Outcomes would be better for everyone (well, except all the health insurance workers who would be unemployed).

> Your proposal is chaos,

Possibly. But we've already seen what your non-chaos looks like, and it's strangling everyone.