Reply #1: No insurance, surgery bills - request for guidance

[healthcarebnkrupt]

I recently had to get heart surgery and I have no insurance.
My family has offered to pitch in to pay. The hospital bill is
outrageous.
They are charging 3 to 4 times more than what they would
charge if I had medicare.
I found this out by looking up the CPT codes in my bill online
on american medical assocn
web site and found that every single item is charged 3 to 4
times more.

We were forced to pre-pay an estimate before they would admit
me for surgery.
My family went through a lot of trouble to organize the money
in time by taking several loans.
Now we are getting the bills and are trying to figure out if
we could get some of the money
back because we feel we are being FLEECED.

When I approached the hospital  authorities to reason this
they are telling me that they have 
already discounted the charges for me and they can do nothing
more. They have told me explicitly that they are in the
business of making money and the few souls that sympathised
with me and tried to talk to their superiors got yelled at for
not looking out for the hospital.
This is a big and well known hospital.

Is there no regulation on HOW much a hospital can charge for a
service relative to medicare?????
How can chargin me 3 to 4  times (300 to 400%) more than a
typical bill be fair?

THANK YOU for ANY HELP.