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Many of these facilities - including hospitals - should be charged under RICO.

4 years ago my daughter had a simple operation (about 90 minutes) to repair torn ligaments in her knee. The anaesthesiologist was employed by the hospital. She stayed in a normal (not ICU) room for 2 days. The bill was $128,000!!! The biggest joke was that I had cleared the operation and hospital stay with BC/BS, and had a maximum out-of-pocket of $1500 per family member...yet I received a bill from the hospital for about $86,000 after the “discount” for BC/BS. I called the doctor who performed the operation (a personal friend) and told him all of the facts and asked him to discuss this with the billing dept. at the hospital. He came back 2 days later and said to forget about the entire bill...maybe my not-so-subtle hint that I would call the state medical board and the newspapers, as well as potentially making a criminal complaint, had some effect. :>)

That a provider could even ATTEMPT something like this is absurd. Of course, the biggest problem is that the Sherman Antitrust Act has, for some reason ($$$ what could it be? $$$) NEVER once been applied to any actor in the medical industry. Somehow or other, I don’t think that this is what the law says, it is just “selective” prosecution that is related to huge contributions.