My insurance got billed 6k for a chest ultra-sound. They paid 4k. Hospital still wanted around 2k, had to negotiate and pay a little over 1k at the end.

The line item for physician cost (billed separately) had 2 digits.

Do you really think current health care is giving accurate line items on your bill?

So the argument that the crutch is expensive because an MD handed it to you probably doesn't hold, the clinician files something, probably under a CPT code, and you were billed for that separately.

This depends on the service of course, you may see say a CT scan where the room time & tech etc. are rolled into one item, but the radiologist review is separate. So it isn't just people vs. equipment, etc.