I haven't paid that much but these people rip us off with every charge they can.

Why are hospital charges so very high?  That is not a nice question but let's attempt an answer.  I will of course cause some of my former colleagues to suffer a relapse of perforating duodenal ulcer, and will irritate our opposing Obama faction just as severely, but here goes anyway:

Medical Centers, Hospitals, Community Clinics, and Medical Offices, are legal terms that denote the resources available to a health care facility.

1.

Medical centers may have staffs in excess from 130 to 500 full time specialists, residents, and interns, and bed space in excess of 400 beds.  Their pharmacies are specially licensed and inspected.  

Harborview, for one example, maintains 380 beds, staffs 200 full time professionals and has 32 professional services, five primary buildings and four auxiliary buildings. 

Seattle VA Medical Center is a government hospital aproximately the same capability as Harborview.  We work closely together, to everyone's benefit.

That is of course big-ticket medicine.  Patients pay the bulk of the costs through medical insurance, State emergency reimbursement, and Federal programs (Kaiser-Permanente, Blue Cross, Group Health Cooperative, CHAMPVA, Medicare, CHAMPUS, etc).

2.

Hospitals have between 40 and 125 beds, 30 specialists, 40 nursing staff, 10 interns, 10 residents, and serve a much smaller area.  Here we divide the role of Hospital and Nursing Home.  While they have the same bed count and nursing staff, Nursing Homes do not have surgical services although many have excellent in-house pharmacies. 

By now, you can see that the costs to build and run a modern hospital is staggering and patients must pay the cost.  It is worse that 1/4 are uninsured or underinsured, declare bankruptcy in the face of catastrophic medical expense, etc.  That drives costs higher yet.

Obama's Health Care Initiative did nothing to remedy any of these problems: Obamacare only made everything worse for everybody.

Because that's America for ya....I have so many un-paid hospital bills it isn't even funny.