Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Seen a lot of conversation about how predatory the American medical system is. So I will weigh in. I ended up going to the ER about 2 weeks ago for crippling pain. Turned out to be a ruptured ovarian cyst. I was there for MAYBE 4 hours. My bill? $13,500 dollars. Because I'm uninsured (by choice, that shit is a SCAM), the hospital dropped my bill down to $8,100 and some change as an "uninsured" discount. For starters, $13,500 for a 4 hour hospital visit is insane as it is. But the fact the hospital can wipe $5,000 off the bill "just because" should show you how utterly fucked this system is. And to be clear - $8,000 is still an absolutely insane sum of money when all these people did was scan my stomach and give me some pain killers. On my itemized bill, my CT scan was 7k. The iodine they used was $900. Just being in the ER room alone was $2,500. We phoned the hospital to haggle. They dropped the price by $20. Normal people can't survive this shit. I do okay and $8,000 is still an INSANE chunk of money out of my savings. Anyone who argues this isn't a disgusting, predatory system is crazy. And it is even crazier that Americans accept this. And for those of you who argue this is the free market, I need you to be quiet. There can never be a true free market here when government and insurance have their creepy little fingers in this pie. People shouldn't go bankrupt trying to pay medical bills. This has to change.