No, they mark it down as $69,000 and then show the "insurance negotiated" rate underneath. They do this regardless of whether or not you are paying out on of pocket. If you are uninsured they do the same thing but the discount is for "self pay" or whatever. It just seems kind of stupid but most people just see the insurance rate that applies to them when they are paying out of pocket in the deductible range. It's propaganda/manipulation.
Not a completely unreasonable headline, considering that an uninsured person would get a bill for something probably closer to $69k than $2.5k. I've gotten one of those bills before, and IMO the insanity of it cannot be pointed out enough times.
This is true and the system is incredibly wasteful and dumb, but to be clear those uninsured people would immediately negotiate it down to about $250 by calling and saying "wtf am I supposed to do with this bill".
No. What really happens is that the hospital does a check on whether the uninsured person has any assets.
If yes >> garnish the assets. This can include your business, your house, whatever you have.
If no >> ok they're poor, let's negotiate it down to the limit of what they can pay.
If they're really, really poor, it gets written off... and the other uninsured people bear the cost of that writeoff. That's one of the major reasons that the costs for uninsured people are so crazy; the hospital system is allowed to do that.
But it sure does make a good headline.