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Comment by nightcracker | Hacker News Reader

Considering she was unconscious she could not possibly have consented to those transactions. What laws exist that allow these companies to unilaterally create these transactions, and what limitations do they have?

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They have literally no limitations. The reason that an advil at the hospital costs $200 is because they were afraid if they made it cost $20000 people would burn down the hospital.

This is the first comment on the page that has something other than "more government regulation" as a solution. Just sayin'.

Considering how many people have had their lives ruined by absurd hospital bills I'm honestly surprised nobody's shot one up yet.

Really, the only surprise is that you didn't Google "hospital shooting", the following hit from Google lists 15 hospital shootings in 2018 alone:

https://www.campussafetymagazine.com/tag/hospital_shootings/

I guess you can go look for the motivation, most shootings probably isn't financially motivated thought.

There is an out of pocket maximum of $7350 for 2018(going up to $7900 for 2019) for ACA compatible plans. Many plans have lower out of pocket maximums too. The health insurance company will negotiate and generally pay substantially less than $377k for a $377k bill.

On the flip side, what laws exists to say a hospital can't treat any unconscious person since they can't consent. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

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