So I guess the standard "you should have read the terms and conditions before you signed the form" only applies in one direction eh?

If you present a contract to the hospital and explain that these are your terms, and a reasonably understood officer of the business signs it, then sure: they're on the hook. Contracts are contracts, and the law gives great weight to consent, even in circumstances like this where it's not clear a real negotiation happened.

The idea above was about "swapping" some random document in for the standard form and presenting it to them as if it was their document. That's not good faith negotiation, that's just fraud.

You don't need the new document to hold up in court, the gambit is to deprive them of having your legal agreement.

Granted, a court might still see that as fraud, IANAL.

And again, refusing to sign a contract while presenting to a business as if you did for the purpose of getting out of the payment agreement is simply fraud. It's not even arguable.

If you gave back a different form and the hospital doesn't bother to check it's their fault. Sending back amended contracts back to back during negotiations is completely normal.

There is a difference between informing them you are modifying it or sending back a clearly edited version and stealthily modifying it in the hopes that they won't notice.

I don't think it's going to hold up if you surreptitiously modify it in bad faith.

Negotiating the terms of contracts isn't fraud. Neither is refusing their insane terms, no matter how "standard" they want you to believe they are.

Swapping forms in secret is the opposite of negotiating.

That's true. But then again, "sign this or you're dead" isn't negotiating either.

The most honest behavior would probably be to mark additions or changes on the form they give you, if they'll fit.

What do you mean in secret? The person explicitly talks about providing the hospital with alternative agreement. It is their responsebility to read everything they sign, just like it is the patient's

The comment I was referring to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31461781

Verbatim quote: "I doubt anyone would catch it".

That is not negotiating, that is fraud.

It is absolutely not your responsibility to check for the case that you give someone papers to sign and they give you back something different unless they tell you so.

It’s not secret. This is standard contract negotiation (sending along a new draft).

Correct. Sending a new draft along with a message saying "here are our revisions," is standard contract negotiation. You would have no case that the new terms were consented to.

It's amazing that you people are still arguing this in earnest so far down the thread. Can you think for a second what the implications of this would mean for society, if it were an acceptable form of "negotiation"? It would be even worse for the ordinary little people.

If you explicitly tell the other side that there are changes, sure.

But the comment I was referring to talked about "swapping" the papers and said "I doubt anyone would catch it". That does not sound like negotiating in good faith to me.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31461781