? Why would having 100 people work day and night to labour over you costing $1300 be a problem. Even by a civic standard it could have been very expensive and that would have been 'fair'.

Because we as a society (Germany in my case) already are already paying them for their work. Why would anybody bill an unfortunate soul for their misfortune?

This outlier is why health insurance exists in most countries.

That reminds of this quote from Aneurin Bevan - founder of the UK NHS:

"Illness is neither an indulgence for which people have to pay, nor an offence for which they should be penalised, but a misfortune the cost of which should be shared by the community."

This is the kind of entitled attitude that destroys any hope of productive socialism.

As an extreme example - you don't 'pay taxes' so that the government will launch a $20 million dollar rescue operation to save your life from deadly illness while on an arctic operation. You're just going to die.

We do a form medial triage on everything (there's an unlimited demand for medical services) and it's largely resources based.

Ex: COVID antivirals - not everyone gets them. They are rationed.

Every service definitely has it's limits, costs get out of hand at the far end of the spectrum on pretty much everything you can imagine.

Which is why 'co pays' are entirely rational - and likely more fair - form of paying for services, in fact it's surprising they are not more common.

A $20K bill for having 'having a baby' is outrageous as it happens in the US, but for '100 medical professionals in attendance' at once isn't unreasonable at all.

Yes that's exactly what the government collects taxes for. That is what say the Bergrettung does. Or what the Coast guard does if there is somebody lost at sea.

Also if somebody on an Antarctic base gets sick and can be evacuated they get evacuated - that is also exactly what you describe.

OFC there is triage but in normal time we have no medical triage aside from a very soft form of it in that non-life threatening and non-urgent procedures are scheduled and delayed as needed.

Co pays for non-elective are only rational if the amounts are negligible even for the most impoverished patient and then its easier and cost effective just to not haver them at all.

From a country that doesn’t have copays, I’m happy with the service I get and I don’t wish for copays. My dad died of cancer last year - the treatments and service he received were excellent. He even got extra money along the way due to his illness and I’m glad my surviving mother is left with the entirety of his estate instead of bills to pay.

> This is the kind of entitled attitude that destroys any hope of productive socialism.

Since his attitude is based on how the systems successfully work in other (more "socialist") countries, I don't think that's a fair argument to make.

You pay for Medicare out of your paycheck your entire career, and you continue to pay for supplementary insurance after that.

There’s an argument for paying a token user fee to discourage overuse of the medical system, but that isn’t the case here.

Because some people regard attempting to literally quantify the value of someones life into a dollar amount to be a "problem"