Yes, I edited it out. You were right, and I figured it better for the conversation to just not start off with that phrasing. Sorry for not seeing a way to make that apparent while also not growing accidental complexity.

One alternative is having consumer protection laws with teeth and state-sponsored consumer protection agencies pursuing lawsuits to enforce their boundaries. It works fairly well that way in some European countries.

One alternative scenario is for courts to start recognizing administrative runaround as actual damages. It sounds like there is a lot of back and forth to correct these fraudulent bills, so estimating maybe 4 days of 4 hours of paralegal-equivalent time ~ $1600. But then additional legal fees on top of that for having to press the matter, so ~$5000? Whereas a class action lawsuit would net like maybe $20 token payment to victims, so $40 cost to company. So perhaps only 1 out of 100 people who were wronged would have to actually sue to make it just as bad for the corpo. Never mind getting into things like treble damages as these corpos are deliberately committing these frauds.