> I would literally rather die than pay for an ambulance.
I wish more people realized this was an option. You can't even imagine how common it is to see the claim "medical care is a special market, because if someone is dying, they will pay ANY AMOUNT for care no matter how high".
Sure, if that person is dying and rates their own health infinitely higher than the welfare of their family, maybe. That's not many people.
Incidentally, the same stupid argument also proves that scamming a life insurance policy by committing suicide is impossible. Life insurance companies, in general, do not agree.
> Sure, if that person is dying and rates their own health infinitely higher than the welfare of their family, maybe. That's not many people.
I don't think that's true. I think that's actually the vast majority of people. Nearly all of them, even. The human survival instinct overrides so much of a human's rational thought processes or even their higher-order emotional processes. You may be one of the rare few for which that's not the case, but, well... you're of a vanishingly rare breed.
And it's not even exactly that. When you're in a life-threatening situation, it's likely that you're either a) unconscious, or b) completely unable to have even a remote grasp of what the cost will be to "fix" you. As in, not even a ballpark figure. Given the potential urgency, you may not have the time to get a second opinion or shop around for a cheaper fix. Just the cost of stabilizing you to the point where you can sit back and make an informed decision could bankrupt you.
Also, just a side note on:
> ... the welfare of their family
There's also a cost to their welfare if you die, too. It's hard to put a number on that while you're healthy, let alone in the midst of an emergency or life-threatening illness.
I wish more people realized this was an option. You can't even imagine how common it is to see the claim "medical care is a special market, because if someone is dying, they will pay ANY AMOUNT for care no matter how high".
Sure, if that person is dying and rates their own health infinitely higher than the welfare of their family, maybe. That's not many people.
Incidentally, the same stupid argument also proves that scamming a life insurance policy by committing suicide is impossible. Life insurance companies, in general, do not agree.