First, it is good to look at this on an international perspective, but an entirely separate article can be done on why an MRI costs $1,080 for a patient with in

First, it is good to look at this on an international perspective, but an entirely separate article can be done on why an MRI costs $1,080 for a patient with insurance and the same treatment would be arbitrarily more for an uninsured patient usually about 4x as expensive. This issue has gone to court in California (2006-2008) resulting in over $1 billion dollars returned to uninsured patients because Courts found hospitals were illegally "price gouging" uninsured. However, price gouging uninsured is a practice that continues around the US, for example in September I received 17 stitches from a FL hospital and the bill was over $12,000 because I am uninsured. I recorded the entire event on my phone including asking how much the stitches would cost and the staff telling me the bill would be $2,000 if I were insured. I challenge the bill since I was quoted $2,000 for the treatment and my bill was $12,000 and when I produced the video of the staff acknowledging different price structures for insured and uninsured the hospital immediately agreed to cover my entire bill. Second, I can not believe the Washington Post would publish an article titled "Why an MRI costs $1,080 in America and $280 in France", "America" really? I try to never comment on a spelling or grammatical error, but honestly we are talking the Washington Post who should know to use "US" not "America".