Acquiring insurance does nothing to ensure that the facility you visit will accept that insurance.
Further, even if the facility you visit does accept the insurance, that's no guarantee that all doctors within that facility accept that insurance.
Even further, there's no guarantee you'll be conscious to validate that you go to a facility that accepts your insurance.
The insurance system needs to be fundamentally repaired before it can be used to support a "free market" healthcare system.
When my car is damaged in an accident, I take it wherever I want to have it repaired. I don't have to think about whether the shop is "in network" or not. My insurance pays for the cost of the repair, up to the limits of my coverage. Simple.
Does acquiring a credit card ensure that businesses will accept it? When you select your insurance plan, check who accepts it. Problem solved.
* Not inform me they don't accept my credit card
* Provide the goods and/or render the services
* Charge my 10 times the standard price for those goods and/or services because my card was not accepted?
No sane person would agree that this would be an acceptable regime for credit cards. Yet it's the world we live in with health insurance.
A "free market" is only effective with price transparency and discovery mechanisms. This is not possible in the current healthcare and insurance system as it exists today.
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Aside from that, you failed to even engage or address the following points from my earlier comment.
> Further, even if the facility you visit does accept the insurance, that's no guarantee that all doctors within that facility accept that insurance.
> Even further, there's no guarantee you'll be conscious to validate that you go to a facility that accepts your insurance.
I think both of those points address and rebut your "check who accepts it" argument. Do you have any response to those?
Among people who support "free market healthcare", who specifically is seriously pushing a plan like this? It is not something I've seen before.
Nobody advocating for free market healthcare is expecting people to shop around in emergencies. People are expected to shop around for good insurance plans which will cover emergency situations to their satisfaction. That is why many free market healthcare supporters also support removing the incentives for employer-provided insurance plans:
- remove the tax exemption for employer-provided insurance
- add a tax exemption for individual/family insurance, including a rebate for the amount of money payroll (social security and medicare) taxes would affect the amount of money available for that insurance
This way, people don't lose their insurance when they lose their job, and people have more insurance options. This would also likely have a beneficial affect on insurance competition.