Second the medical price is set in a way that is very complicated. There is one price technically but they do various discounts depending on your insurance. That is because the insurance companies pay the participating hospital a set rate every month no matter if you get treated or not.
In some ways insurance is spreading out the costs by doing this. It is not actually a bad idea. It gives a small but steady income to the medical facility and when they do treat you your bill is lowered.
You should have told the hospital that you are a cash patient. They could have charged you then and there. You would have gotten a major price cut on your bill because you are reducing the billing work load. Mostly a bill is coded, submitted, denied, corrected, resubmitted, disputed, reworked, resubmitted.... you get the picture. A year later they get paid. Cash does away with that so they are willing usually to cut your bill by about 2/3 if not more. So next time tell them you are a cash patient and will be paying then and there.
But that is for future reference.
Now what you need to do is contact the hospital and tell them you are a cash patient and you want to negotiate your bill.
The bill will probably be cut in half if you can pay right now.
Not your best price but much less hassle and headache all around.
Yeah I ran into situation once where my insurance co pay for my son for a procedure was going to be 1000 dollars for a 20000 dollar bill that would be submitted to Insurance but they would accept 500 dollars from me cash and write off the rest.(Insurance would have only given them about 3500 anyway as they would have to write off per contract much of the rest of it. The 1000 dollars I would have to pay was because I hadn’t met the full insurance deductible yet) It also tells me something about the true cost for certain procedures since there is no way hospitals can charge less than break even costs and still remain afloat.