This also ties into that commonly statistic that 60+% of bankruptcies are caused by medical bills. The study is more complicated than that, and it's not the best summary:

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2009/jun/11/chris-dodd...

This is exactly the kind of thing I'm getting at - absolutely 100% of bankruptcies are caused by debt; perhaps 60% of them also have medical debt somewhere in there, but that may be a distraction (after all, once you're on the path to bankruptcy why bother trying to make medical payments, they're not going to repossess your lung but they very well may repossess your house).

The US has a major debt problem and the solution at some point is going to be curtailing just how much debt you can accumulate with just a signature.

A lot of people read that statistic as "medical debt is crippling" but there are also correlations with lot of other life circumstances going on in that figure too.

Most of the people who file something like chapter 7 have little to no income, don't have big bank accounts, luxury cars, second homes, etc. This often correlates with people who have medical issues and rack up big bills, and can't work a job. These people can file "no-asset" chapter 7 cases, in which case, they lose absolutely nothing. This is what happens in the majority of chapter 7 cases filed. So, for a lot of the people who do choose to file, this is because it is a good option, not because it is a life crippling choice forced upon them.

I'm very surprised they do not charge the credit card processing fee here. But I guess since you are actually paying they are making such high margin they don't even care.

Hospitals are incredibly forgiving if you will eventually pay. Collections will give them pennies on the dollar at best.

If you call them up, they'll usually just say "what can you pay?" and agree to just about anything you propose.

This is 100% the case, the billing side is completely and absolutely disconnected from the care side it's not even funny. As long as the inflows from customers and insurances companies roughly equal the outflows in expenses, they really don't care much how everything is billed.

Which is why you can often do better paying cash at a "expensive" hospital that is overflowing with money than at a "budget" one that is having difficulty making the numbers balance. The latter is more likely to hard-line.