Why? On what basis? That's wishful thinking, and a very nice idea, like the notion that people should never need to employ deadly force to protect their lives, persons or property, or the idea that people should not starve to death or suffer from want of basic necessities. The reality is otherwise.

Oh, sure it is possible to do make it so something like this happens, but at what cost? There are always costs to be paid for anything, and for a lot people, doing what you need to do to ensure that Situation X (in this case prohibitively expensive medical bills), does not arise, is worse than that cure. There is a saying that sums up the concept of trade-offs in gaining goods or services: "You can have it soon, you have it good or you can have it cheap. Pick two." For some people, the choice of timeliness or quality of service supersedes a low price. Who is to say that the man who dies on a waiting list for medical services is wrong to prefer "soon" over a man facing enormous expenses who prefers "cheap"?

For that matter, the fact that all three members of that family are alive to bitch about the bill might be enough for most people. How many people 100 years ago, facing the same medical problems would have jumped at the chance to turn over every cent they owned and go into debt for the rest of their lives in exchange for the survival of the baby which might otherwise be beyond the medical profession's ability.

You can "solve" the problem of high medical prices in a few different ways. You can outlaw high prices, but the laws of economics state that putting a limit on prices ALWAYS results in a shortage. You can divert the responsibility for meeting those prices to someone else, but the couple in the article claim they do not want that, and indeed, no one actually wants to be the one to pay those prices, and with socialized medicine, everyone has to pay. On what basis does anyone have the right to demand that? What is my incentive, for instance to not use my sick days under false pretenses, or seek treatment I do not really need, if there are no incentives for me to go to work or to refrain from wasting a doctor's time? Under a free market system, the incentive is, I get to earn or keep more money. As sad as these absurd outlier scenarios moondog is fond of presenting as representative of the system, if you give everyone, even foreign visitors, a million dollar safety net on medical bills, the system is going to break down. For every person whose employer does not provide enough sick days for their particular problems, there are dozens of people who abuse sick time for frivolous reasons. The more employers have to spend on their employees' health care, and paying the salaries of unproductive invalids, the higher the prices they will have to charge for goods and services, and the less money will be available to compensate the employees who do not incur such costs.

No matter onto whom else you attempt to slough off the costs of medical care, there will be unintended consequences and ripples and other people paying for it one way or another. There is no free lunch, and there are no solutions, only trade-offs. "Solving" one problem only creates another somewhere else.