As if the entire accounting episode is that simple.
Both hospital and insurance work together on a very large scale, involving piles of contracts and laws which must be satisfied. To you, it looks like they got a 90% discount; to them (as others indicated above), they have to play all kinds of games with those numbers, charging inordinate amounts in order to get what they need via expected discounts. If they think you’re going to get Medicare involved, they have to hike the bill so when the feds refuse to pay the full amount they’ll get what they actually want/need out of it. When your insurance got involved, they manage to negotiate discounts & suitable understandings because they’re buying services in such huge amounts (economy of scale etc.).
Your mistake (aside from trying to go without insurance!) was not going to the hospital cashier and saying “WTH?” and offering, say, $2K.
Upshot: it’s a whole lot more complicated than just a 90% discount.
...they have to play all kinds of games with those numbers, charging inordinate amounts in order to get what they need via expected discounts.
Sounds like more reason to change such a screwed up system.
From what you describe, if the insurance company wasn’t part of the picture, I could have got screwed big time and probably would have...just like so many other people have had to mortgage houses to pay hospitals.
Read your post a few times. Man....what a mess. Imagine if you took your car to the mechanic and had this kind of ‘accounting episode’.