Originally Posted by AmeliaG

Doctors have to spend a lot of staff time on dunning insurance companies to pay, so they can afford to give a cash patient, who will just pay at the time of service, a more reasonable price. If insurance companies can negotiate awesome prices, do you really think the USA would have the highest healthcare costs in the world? If insurance is helpful for pricing, then why are government systems like Japan and free market systems like Thailand so much better priced?

Where can you insure a family for $350 a month?

Have you ever had a problem where you needed your car insurance to go to bat for you? Not that long ago, I got rear-ended while stopped at a stop light. Both the other person in the car with me and I were injured. The other guy's insurance company adjuster refused to pay any of our medical and told me I should just get my bumper repainted and they saw no need to replace any crumpled parts, no matter how nice and new the car had been. My insurance company told me that, as the accident was so obviously not my fault, there was no need for them to participate in the negotiation, although they might need to raise my rates, if I had been in an accident.

If I need a cancer operation, I do not want people like that deciding whether I get to receive life-saving surgery?