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You're suggesting a bureaucratic function to enforce "fair" prices. While it would certainly serve to police egregious cases of fraud, I doubt that you could move me from the opinion that it would provide a kind of subsidy that would tend to increase prices.

I'm about to run out of patience because you are demonstrating what has gotten a few hundred people banned over a decade of writing here: Intentionally ignoring the text in the post in question, claiming it doesn't exist by omission.

Well, it DOES exist. It exists in multiple forms:

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Any medical provider who attempts to bill any service or product above that price to a person in exigent circumstances forfeits 100% of their invoice and is guilty of consumer fraud.

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All anti-trust and consumer protection laws shall be enforced against all medically-related firms and any claimed exemptions for health-related firms in relationship to same are hereby deemed void; for private actions all such violations proved up in court are entitled to treble damages plus a $50,000 statutory civil penalty per impacted person.

and finally

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7. Any provider of service that falsifies billing under this section, bills at inflated prices or otherwise violates the provisions of this law in regard to any bill submitted to the US Treasury for payment shall be deemed guilty of a criminal felony for which the punishment shall be the forfeiture of three times the billed amount and each individual who has caused such an invoice to be issued, transmitted or otherwise participated in same shall be subject to a fine of not less than $1,000 nor more than $10,000 and imprisonment of not less than 2 and not more than 5 years. Each fraudulent invoice shall constitute a separate and distinct offense, all penalties shall be consecutive and additive, and liability for same shall be joint and several.

Between these three clauses what you claim will happen simply won't. Why? Because the civil remedy for PRIVATE actions makes it so lucrative in the civil litigation area that anyone who gets fucked like this AND IS POOR will (from their point of view) win the lottery. Not only do they get THREE TIMES the inflated bill they ALSO get $50 large.

This guarantees there will be plenty of attorneys willing to take such cases on contingency, and even with them collecting the customary 20% for doing so the person who is poor and has this done to them will gain anywhere from $30,000 to $100k+ simply because some doctor or clinic did that.

In short it won't happen and there will be no "bureaucratic" solution required - the market and private civil litigation threat will take care of it.

This site always entertains legitimate and honest debate. Dishonest tactics reliably lead to immediate and irrevocable ban-hammer use. You may consider this fair warning and I expect either an honest and debate-based rebuttal to those THREE anti-fraud provisions OR a blanket retraction of your claims.

You choose.

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