That is a joke.
What you call a joke is reality...One that I live on a daily basis. It's not a fast food restaurant, so its not going to have a list of costs or "weekly specials". They charge what they charge, and if its too exorbitant to a person or insurance company, the hospital will be dropped, and we lose patients, which loses money to the Hospital. Government regulations thru Obamination care are not only making it less safe for patients to be discharged, now its making a nightmare for our Social Workers and Discharge Planners, in trying to arrange the appropriate equipment. I realize you don't care, since they work for "the big evil hospital", but since it directly effects the safety of the patient, as we try to rehabilitate them from whatever brought them into the hospital in the 1st place, folks like myself, do care
Not to mention, all the charitable care and services that we provide to those with no insurance or money. I have been working with a homeless woman with severe circulation problems in her right leg. So bad, she couldn't even walk using her cart. She received life saving bypass surgery, and extensive therapy following the surgery. And you think she was charged for it??
And what Cu4 references IS TYPICAL