While I would never take any article on Cracked.com too seriously, a lot of that actually lines up with some of what I've been told by a couple of longtime friends I have who are now doctors, another I have who is basically a high level administrator for health services and a member of my immediate family who is a public relations consultant for the "hospital association" here (I have no idea what to call it but basically the body which standardizes practices across the various public hospitals in our public healthcare system by region).
I obviously don't know anything about the bill aspect, but do remember listening to a Keith and the Girl podcast after Keith got out of the hospital for a week (liver abscess) and went on a rant about how they were trying to charge him for pillows, etc. He got a bill for something like $60,000 basically called and said there was literally no way he could ever possibly pay that and they cut it down to something like $8,000. It ended up being even less by the end of it. Insane.
