I work independently and don't have health coverage from an employer. My wife had an unpleasant accident recently and had to be rushed to Manipal Hospital(BLR) for an emergency surgery of her right hand. Although the experience was relatively pleasant, it ended up being pretty expensive ~$2500 for surgery and hospitalization(she completely broke both bones between her wrist and elbow in a simple fall!).
I found a few of interesting facts:
The charges for everything are based on the kind of room you select(general ward, semi-private, private, luxury etc) and go up exponentially.
Hospitals try to stick you with the highest class as much as possible by claiming no vacancy
We didn't know this, but when you don't have insurance, you have to tell them repeatedly that you don't have insurance so they don't stick you with un-necessary charges
This may be an exception, but I notice that they love to dose you up on medicines all the time. My wife had to argue with the nurses that her anti-biotic treatment was only for 3 days, but the nurses kept insisting it was harmless!