Those numbers make kind of no sense. We had a 5 days delivery+postpartum at Stanford and were billed ~200k (insurance paid 50k, we paid 600$) which I found insane already. So 100k billed for stitches makes even less sense.
i know Americand are imagining a horrible 3rd world facility, but its not. its a beautiful hospital with very kind people who take great care of you. we got the fancy big suite, so we could accommodate a bunch of family and friends. we were there for four days and i ended up paying about 4k USD, out of pocket, without insurance.
and I think this is where the problem is. I personally have friends who are doctors here (private sector) they have great lives financially, (nice cars, big house, trips to europe, etc). I get a feeling healthcare professionals in the US arent satisfied with upper middle class, they want to be hyper rich.
Maybe if youre the only person that can save me from a strange cancer you should be hyper rich, but not if youre doing regular procedures.
In medical parlance, this is called uncompensated care or uncompensated revenue. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid provides a ton of detail [1].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disproportionate_share_hospita...
[1]: https://www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Guidance/Manual...
Like any negotiation you want to start high rather than low.