I'm surprised to see lots of people in the comments talking about line items. Line Items are irrelevant. They could include line items for oxygen and toilet paper if they wanted to. The hospital charges whatever the market (and where applicable, regulations) allow. The configuration of the line item is pretty much a customer service problem: 'how do we show what we've done in a way that will get the customer to pay it.'
> The hospital charges whatever the market [...] will allow.
Except that in this case, the market is paying before being told the cost. So, what is enforcing the upper limit on price in this type of bizarro market?
There is an issue with what I'll call the "consumer-market" theory in emergency healthcare in that there is no transparency in pricing at time of purchase or prior to purchase.
How can markets function without price-transparency?
