Also see Time's extensively researched "Why Medical Bills are Killing Us" http://healthland.time.com/why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/ http://healthland.time.co

Also see Time's extensively researched "Why Medical Bills are Killing Us" http://healthland.time.com/why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/ http://healthland.time.com/why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/ the tl;dr of it: hospitals are charging the uninsured exhorbitant markups over Medicaid (which they bitch about, but they actually do well enough that they advertise to Medicaid patients) because they can. Without pricing information (which they hide as much as possible), every emergency is a miniature monopoly. "Non-profit" hospital administrators have every incentive to expand the facilities/prestige of their institution, so they act like the most rapacious "for-profit" corporations imaginable.