Zuckerberg San Francisco General’s tactics leave patients with big bills

"Our mission is to serve people who are underserved because of their financial needs. We feel like we have to recoup what we're able to from people who are insured because we're supporting people who don’t have insurance."

Notice how they say "recoup what we're able to from people who are insured" -- not "from insurance companies." This comment is infuriating not because it's tone deaf, but because it's literally exactly what they're doing. They're asking insurance companies to pay $2,000, and Joe Policyholder to pay $20,000.

Does anybody actually think it's good policy to fund healthcare for the underserved by extorting tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars per incident from the savings accounts of random injured people who have health insurance? The point of health insurance, and the reason it was deemed necessary for everybody to have, is that it's supposed to avoid exactly this scenario. What the fuck are we doing back here again?

There was comment on here a few weeks ago [1]:

> 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.

I think these guys overshot.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18719644

How has this not been a scandal? The hospital, owned by the city, is fleecing its own citizens. The incentives are so perverse.

This is one reason why people in the middle to lower middle class resent the system. The system will only take care of you if you are indigent. If you're upper class you're wealthy enough to take care of your own problems. Of course I think their grievance ends up being that somebody else got something they didn't instead of demanding they receive the same benefits (affordable healthcare).