The price gouging here comes from owning the only hospital that serves a particular area, not from any sort of evil government insurance mandate. Your choices are:
a) pay high prices at the door of the hospital
b) pay high insurance prices (to the same entity that owns the hospital)
I would be interested in a map that details distance to a major hospital vs price and also whether 95% of customers would be better served by air ambulance to the major hospital vs the local one.
One example is the hospital in El Granada just outside of Half Moon Bay. This hospital serves the local community yet it is only 30-45 mins over the hill to get to Stanford or Burlingame by car and less by helicopter. Considering that, the hospital is under utilized. Even further south in Pescardero you would go up to Stanford via La Honda typically. That is at the limit of the golden hour though. So here you have an example of a hospital that doesn't really need to exist except for widow maker events where you need to be seen as fast as possible (within the golden hour). So one question is, can you have smaller hospitals with lower revenues to serve this market. Even in rural hospitals if you need specialist care you will be transported out or otherwise wait several hours.
Could you argue that, with UPMC owning the hospital and also offering the best insurance plan for the area, the mandate increases the number of people buying their plan who otherwise would not?
> evil government insurance mandate
Don't try to gin us up. Honestly, I'd prefer single-payer. The stop-gap insurance mandate is far from optimal, which is why a lot of us don't like it - not because we think it's "evil."
a) pay high prices at the door of the hospital
b) pay high insurance prices (to the same entity that owns the hospital)
c) do without healthcare
Insurance mandates don't play any role here.