I think you might be taking it a bit too personally. I live in New England, and people are very blunt and straightforward here. I've gathered, asking if certain things are covered, that the office staff (and even moreso the providers), genuinely have no idea how any of this shit works. People are to the point here, so some of them will tell me as much, and I learn it's pointless to ask those questions at time of care. Wait for the garbage to go into the system, garbage comes out, and then we can maybe talk... Because this is totally how legitimate businesses operate, and bears no resemblance to how the mafia would determine what you owed in protection money. But arguing with the front desk staff would be rather pointless. You just go along with the madness, just like citizens of the USSR did when everything was falling apart around them, and hope the whole thing crashes and burns sooner than later.

In other parts of the country, people are passive aggressive and it's extremely annoying. They won't admit they don't know, because it's all about appearances. Patients faced with such responses would become irate. What do you mean you don't know?! The workers hate themselves for not knowing, and they know this whole thing is a scam even better than you do. They hate themselves for participating in the scam, and so the cognitive dissonance manifests as rudeness towards you.