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Comment by adra | Hacker News Reader

Let's say I bought a server from Dell. They quote me a cost of $6000. Maybe they assumed I was part of an MVP program that I hadn't been aware of. I have it delivered and installed and later the rep invoices me the price at 1 million dollars for the server because they made a "mistake" on the discount. I may have signed a resale agreement telling them that I'd pay for the hardware sent to me, so tell me how this is fair and equitable trade practices? It may be viable to ship the server back and call the sale a wash, but there's no rolling back medical treatment.

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What’s your point against my comment?

I'm not OP, their point is that in any other consumer-facing industry you can't just give someone an estimate, provide zero other guidance on pricing, get them to sign a contract that says they have to pay you whatever you want (and if they don't sign, they don't get potentially lifesaving care), and then after delivery of the good/service you then charge an entirely different amount which is 200x higher because 'oops yeah our bad we got the estimate wrong by a factor of 200 but you have to pay that now, tough luck'.

In reality, consumers in the USA seem to have more protection buying a can of beans than they do in paying for cancer care - but this doesn't have to be the case!

Did you read my comment? Where did I support the hospital?

I can't tell if you're trolling or being serious?

> If you read the article, the hospital made a mistake, didn’t know she’s an out-of-network patient, so got the insurance wrong.

Surely you understand putting this with nothing else next to it is making excuses for the hospital and implying the patient is in the wrong?

Where did I imply the patient is in the wrong?

At this point I think everyone decides you're trolling. I hope that's it, rather than just being so bad at understanding what the comment you're replying to is saying.

Seriously, where did I imply the patient is in the wrong?

I had more, but I'm cutting it to the minimum:

It sure sounds like you took the hospital's side in the dispute. You then didn't offer any clarifying details as to your stance-- instead going "huh-huh--- where did I say that?! where did I say that?!" This doesn't help communication, but it sure does help confrontation and wasting other people's effort in communicating with you.

Where did I take the hospital's side? I said the hospital made a mistake. I am not satisfied with the title of the report because I think the hospital's mistake had a valid reason, it's not an intentional scam. It's not like the hospital intentionally hide the price and then charged her with a high price for no reason. I think the out-of-network insurance mistake could actually happen. That's my whole point. You guys are second-guessing my intention. It's not my fault at all.

You could have clarified that at any point without having lots of whiny, shill-sounding comments.

> It's not like the hospital intentionally hide the price and then charged her with a high price

Actually, this is exactly the practice with chargemasters: no one is able to know the price because the hospital holds the pricing information confidential.

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