The problem is that patients are being pulled into BS that normally they wouldn’t with other insurance.
When my car got damaged, I just brought it to a garage and gave them my insurance details. If they didn’t get paid it wasn’t on me.
Hospitals don't. Patients are.
I most certainly have options for my in-network healthcare provides and no, a crappy auto repair can certainly include an element of risk of death or permanent disability. Maybe not to the same degree, but if some shop forgets to reconnect the brakes it ain’t good.
In the case of an automobile repair, this is virtually never the case. Tow services if you've broken down on the road might be an exception, but few if any auto-repair issues (standard maintenance, component failure, collission repair) *will not suffer additional harm if repair is delayed by hours, or days, even months or years in many cases.
That's not the case for medical treatment.
This is fully independent of the quality or appropriateness of treatemnt / repair itself.
I do hope I've made the distinction sufficiently clear.
If you need surgery for your back, you can take the time to evaluate different doctors and hospitals, get their opinions and make a choice.
In the US healthcare system, "patients are being pulled into BS that normally they wouldn’t with other insurance". Without choice. And as numerous others have noted in this thread, sufficiently often in cases where the consequence of delay is critical. The newborn requiring NICU treatment is a case in which care is both urgent and consent or shopping by the patient is a complete impossibility (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29766079).
I stand by my point. I'm a bit confused why you're arguing against your own earlier position.