Not really: hospitals are public, and doctors are on government payroll, which keeps their prices on check. For example, a similar emergency here would cost not

Not really: hospitals are public, and doctors are on government payroll, which keeps their prices on check. For example, a similar emergency here would cost nothing to the patient, and less than $2500 to the public health system (mostly helicopter gas): more or less $0.001/tax payer. Costa Rica has around 1000 cases like this per year, so state of the art snake poisoning treatment coverage costs less than $1/tax payer/year (most cases doesn't require air transport). The public health coverage covers everyone depending on the worker so the system receives money (from salary taxes) proportionally to the amount of people it has to cover (think of it like a non for profit health insurance company). A nice result is that competition from government keeps private sector prices low, and more or less still accessible to most population. That is why here private hospitals are profiting from medical tourism.