Many hospitals, doctors offer cash discount for medical bills - latimes.com

This article clearly points out the tremendous distortion in our US medical care system.
Many hospitals, doctors offer cash discount for medical bills - latimes.com:  It is absurd that there could be such a wide difference between the "cash price" and the insurance price such that even a 25% co-pay is higher than the amount a patient would have to pay if they paid cash.

In my mind the distortion is caused by the fact that the hospitals need to recover funds expended on patients who can't pay and don't have insurance.  That is the root cause--then the insurance companies, acting as a buffer between the consumer and the provider actually magnify the situation.  I'm not convinced that Obamacare will fix the situation --it may make it worse.  The best answer is still "single payer" system--The Government -provided medical care system which is used in almost all of the rest of the world.