34 k would pay for the original poster's trip to my country (Uruguay), the best treatment available, and he'd have money left over - heck, 34 k would probably pay the doctor's wages on that hospital for a year.
There are very dodgy and shady costs with US healthcare.
I have the very best healthcare available in my country (Hospital Británico). It costs U$ 150 per month. A kidney stone would probably run me in the hundreds of dollars. 3k would probably bankrupt me.
http://www.hospitalbritanico.org.uy
Some differences are that doctors in the U.S. are paid an order of magnitude more, and I've heard hospitals have legions of well-paid administrators doing paperwork for insurance companies, which will have legions of people doing paperwork on their side, and government doing its bit, and lawyers doing their thing. All that money is obviously not going directly into healthcare, it's basically bureaucracy friction. I suspect "real" healthcare costs, even factoring expensive U.S. doctors, would be shockingly cheap.