I am a 'self pay' American citizen when it comes to health care. I went to a Houston emergency room on 7/3 (four day weekend) with a clean gash to the bone on my thumb. I couldn't feel the tip of my thumb and was concerned about nerve damage. Three & 1/2 hours later I was told the nerves would grow back (they have) and was treated with 1 x-ray, 1 tetnus shot & 5 stitches. I asked for my bill and was told it would arrive in the mail. It did to the tune of $3,800. The bill includes ridiculous charges such as $430 for heart monitoring - and unexplicable charges - $169 for neck/scalp repair(?). The more calls I make the muddier things get. Hospitals have no customer service skills nor a sense of reason when it comes to billing. Then I read in last Sunday's Houston Chron that Mexican women are coming here for free medical services delivering their children. And I quote the mother of four "Why pay $1,000 in Mexico when you can have your child here for free?" I now get what the not-so-hidden charges are for. And the hospitals wonder why we won't just open our wallets. Maybe the insurance companies will pay without question but I refuse to hand my money over without a fight for a reasonable bill. I have no problem paying my own way but the hospital system has created a culture that makes it very hard to be responsible for yourself and very easy to hand the bill to some bloated entity. While I can't get a call back from the hospital accounting dept, I have been solicited a dozen times by a company that bills the government on the hospitals behalf. Can we just Nationalize the Health Care System already and quit funding the beaurocratic paper pushing mess we have now?