The Atlantic

Why Europeans Don’t Get Huge Medical Bills

Other countries still have health insurers, but they avoid five-figure medical bills. The answer lies in how the insurers and doctors are regulated.
Source: Fabrizio Bensch / Reuters

Should America just get rid of health insurers?

Americans don’t seem to like insurance companies much, even if they’re happy with their health coverage itself. Several Democratic health-care proposals would end private health insurance entirely, an idea that some Americans seem to applaud, until you tell them that it would entail higher taxes and a government-run system. And then they sometimes, but not always, become less sanguine.

One reason insurance companies get a bad rap.” These occur when insured patients go to a hospital they thought was in-network, but then—sometimes inadvertently—see a doctor who is out-of-network while they’re there. (This is on top of the that many uninsured people receive, no matter what doctor or hospital they go to.)

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