Your last sentence is the real meat of the problem. Yes, the bill could have been 2000 or 20,000 but Medicare paid what the actual charges should have been. A large portion was billed to pay for the indigent and illegals that are covered without charge. The entire medical field is guilty of overcharging everyone that they can scrape a dollar off of. If John Doe takes his vehicle to the shop to get it fixed and he doesn't have any money, do you pay for it for him? Absolutely no difference. Of course when you operate on emotion instead of logic, you can come up with all kinds of stories.