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Jan 8, 2019

ER bills are expensive. And secretive.

In some hospitals, you could pay thousands of dollars just to sit in the waiting room.

by Sean McHenry
"The costs are high — and they vary hugely from hospital to hospital," says Vox's Sarah Kliff. "Case in point: I found one hospital charging $1 for a squirt of an antibiotic ointment called bacitracin —and another charging $76."
"The costs are high — and they vary hugely from hospital to hospital," says Vox's Sarah Kliff. "Case in point: I found one hospital charging $1 for a squirt of an antibiotic ointment called bacitracin —and another charging $76."
Joe Raedle/Getty Images

A lot of us — probably most of us — will end up in an emergency room at some point in our lives. But what’s less certain is exactly how much that ER visit is going to cost us. Vox senior policy correspondent Sarah Kliff took a deep dive into ER billing, then she wrote about it on Twitter. Her Twitter story is included below.

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