Hospitals do this, but backwards. The service provider gets to set the price.

Basically only in America, though. Elsewhere the situation where someone gets into a car wreck, goes to hospital and then gets told how broke they are now just doesn't exist.

In much of the rest of the world, the health system sets and publishes the rates - and guarantees payment to service providers. The doctors perform the services, and then submit for renumeration directly to the health system. The patients, well, they're sick and don't have to worry about any of it.

Side note, just fyi, because I used to make the exact same (tiny) mistake all the time. It's spelt remuneration rather than renumeration.

I think it helps to think of the `muner` part as being derived from the same root word as money rather than `numer` as number (which had been my previous assumption I guess).

You just inspired me to actually google my memory technique above, and it turns out the `mun` is from a latin root word for gifting (think munificent)[0]

So now I can think of a munificent monetary remuneration, and should remember it!

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/remuneration#:~:t...

Thanks! I think I’d have been typing it wrong for the rest of my life had you not pointed this out haha.

Most developing countries are moving to the US model - private hospitals in India, China and the Middle East, for instance.

What baffles me is how expensive government hospitals too are in the US.

It's not about whether the hospitals are private or not, it's whether you know the price beforehand and can make an informed choice - the most basic thing about the free market.

Funny how everybody began to downvote me after totally misunderstanding my point in muddled fashion.

I wasn't talking about hospitals going private - after all, there are private hospitals in Europe and the UK too. I was talking about poor price transparency in the US being adopted in all of those places by private players. I specifically called out government players in the US, since they engage in the same practice, while government hospitals in all of those countries do not.

Pretty sure they make you an offer on the gold that you can decline. Probably still predatory but I think you are mistaken