Sometimes the cost is bigger than the cost in a different country plus the plane ticket.
Insurance companies each negotiate a rate for various services with hospitals. People pay different rates depending on the insurance they have, due to these different negotiated rates.
This creates a perverse incentive where hospitals want to list their "cash" price as being higher than the negotiated rates, otherwise insurance companies will come back to negotiate their rates down to the obviously lower cash price.
In reality, it's usually surprisingly easy to get hospitals to give significant discounts if you tell them you're without insurance and you'll be paying in cash. Patients without insurance can often negotiate their bills down to a fraction of the original list price by simply calling in and telling the billing office they don't have insurance.
It's obviously not a great system.
You have no position to negotiate and I have never got them to budge. I have tried and gotten pretty angry about it.
Short-term insurance is a waste of money because the rates did not appear to be negotiated at all. They paid 5% of the bill and stuck me with the rest.
The only reason to actually pay your bills is the hospital might eventually sue you. Its messed up.
Turned out the hospital was not in network, they charged me $15,000 (including $10,000 for a "level 5" ER room stay, which is twice the most expensive price listed on the OP's website and is 10x the local average price for that service, despite the fact that my experience could not possibly have been Level 5 service). Eventually they just sold the debt to a collections agency. I tried to fight but they didn't seem to care, and why would they? They already sold the debt!
Just because other countries medical & legal systems are different than the US doesn't mean they are inferior.
A country can have a fine legal system for locals that's difficult or prohibitively expensive to access for non-citizens living outside the country.
All the Americans end up going to my competitor, who is currently in the midst of three lawsuits which will probably sink the company. Two of the lawsuits are with clients I turned away simply because they looked likely to sue!
You can bet that as an American, you will pay substantially more than a local for many services simply because Americans have a reputation for this sort of stuff, and local businesses don't want to take the risk.
I really wish there was some kind of certificate saying "I have never set foot in a courtroom, threatened legal action, or hired a lawyer".
If I rent you a jetski for an hour, it isn't my fault if you drive over your child with it... It's a jetski. It's dangerous. Don't expect someone else to pay if you mess up.
You can bet that as a black person in our town, you'll pay substantially more than white folks, because most of us understand that black people have a reputation for this sort of stuff and general trouble, and we don't want to take the risk.
I really wish there was some kind of certificate to let us know which ones are the docile blacks...
(Note: It should go without saying that this is a tongue-in-cheek response)
Should we abuse and enslaved more people just because someone is abused or enslaved elsewhere?
That said, if I'm wrong about that I'm interested in learning more.
Yes. Indian legal system is very inferior compared to USA. My family is fighting a garden variety land dispute case for over a decade. I cannot even imagine someone successfully suing a doctor here for malpractice while living in USA.
I'm a UK citizen, resident in Norway, who has visited Poland on business many time.
I stayed a night in the Krakow Neurological Institute somewhere between fifteen and twenty years ago, cost me about 100 USD. The ambulance that took me there was free.
A few minutes later we saw the helicopter lift from the hospital and head straight towards us. Down came the rescue equipment and Dr Bruno, who told us not to worry because "We do this all the time!". 10 minutes later he was ascending with the patient.
I learned two things: Doctors in Switzerland really do do this stuff all the time, and always have hiking accidents near well-equipped medical facilities that aren't trying to totally screw people over.
I'm pretty sure it was the best $2500 that guy ever spent.
Almost all.
Non citizens just pay a fee or are reinbursed later by their insurance or healthcare system. In many cases citizens from country 'A' can use healthcare in 'B' as long as their own citizens will be granted the same treatment in exchange when visiting 'A'. It depends on the treatises signed between the two countries.
Allowing foreigners to use the health care system for free is sometimes allowed (or even encouraged) if that protects the interests of the country.