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worse than that

>The final bill
It was $297,461, which included two ambulance rides, an emergency room visit and a couple of days in pediatric intensive care. Antivenom alone accounts for $213,278.80 of the total bill.

I remember one of the big revelations in that Bitter Pill article Time Magazine put out years ago is the hospitals expect people to negotiate their bills. I can't think of a single person who isn't involved in the medical field or insurance that knows that.

>Shocked by her bill from Stamford hospital and unable to pay it, Janice S. found a local woman on the Internet who is part of a growing cottage industry of people who call themselves medical-billing advocates. They help people read and understand their bills and try to reduce them. “The hospitals all know the bills are fiction, or at least only a place to start the discussion, so you bargain with them,” says Katalin Goencz, a former appeals coordinator in a hospital billing department who negotiated Janice S.’s bills from a home office in Stamford.

https://time.com/198/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/