Today, you really need a lawyer just to understand the forms being completed.
Go to a PPO doctor, be prepared to recieve a litany of forms releasing him of all accountability, meanwhile surrendering all financial interpretations to an independnet adjudicator of his choosing. Several steps later, the doctor's hired subprofessional staff have learned the ropes of the health insurance company by double and triple charging all possible claim procedures regardless of required procedures in the visit.
Then the insurance company only pays what was reasonable, but the doctor's office/healthcare professional billing service proceeds to charge the double and triple bill to the individual patient in an attempt to milk as much cash out of the fraud as possible.
Edit the form and watch the faces of the girls handling the forms who get beligerant that you dare to challenge their phrasing of a unilateral contract into a bilateral signed document.
At the other end of the spectrum, we have those who simply enter into agreements by culture, earn less than $30k/annum but live in new houses with new cars and no shortage of expendable income say to about %5k per person.
I fear our society is far less secure than most trust.
Human beings simply cannot cope with this complexity indefinitely. Our culture will begin fraying at the edges.
Or is it already.
The note is usually four pages, and the adjustability is carefully spelled out. And ARMs have a disclosure statement in layman's language. Even the Truth-in-Lending states on its face a payment that applies for 24 or 36 months, followed by an estimate of the higher payment that follows. It's not impenetrable.
Certainly not to an accountant, anyway...