What's seeing the expenses going to do, what mechanism is supposed to lower cost? When you need healthcare you need healthcare. No one goes to the physician for fun, elective procedures like breast enlargement or Lasik excepted.
* Shop around
* Plan your cashflow around the healthcare expense
The problem is that the customers cannot see the prices, and thus can't negotiate before hand. This isn't just for emergency care, but for stuff that shouldn't be too hard to get pricing for. There's a nice Vice(?) video about a couple having a baby. They find it impossible to get even an indication of cost before hand.
This patient choice stuff made its way to England, and frankly it's dumb. People don't change their utility suppliers even though they'd save large amounts of cash. They don't change their GP unless they've moved house; they don't have enough information to make an informed choice of hospital if they need to go for surgery. It's a lot of bureaucracy that has very little benefit.
Ooh I know we'll calculate the cost across the mean population. Of course almost everyone has children or was a child, or knows someone who will and is invested in their well-being. And we can't account for when births happen so we need to keep facilities staffed in downturns, and account for future expensive deliveries where neonatal care is needed.
So really, the best strategy would be some scheme where we charge everyone a little - and the more people we add in the pool the smaller it'll get.
If only there were a name for such a system...