Tell me about it. Nearly three years ago, I had to make an ER trip to our nearest hospital, for what turned out to be incipient pneumonia. The hospital was so tapped that I received a call later to report back in because someone spotted an "anomaly" on my left lung (my doctor discovered that this was a shadow from said pneumonia), and I even received further calls asking if I was willing to throw even more money at the hospital for charity. The reason? The hospital administration had wildly overspent on television and newspaper advertising, and figured that panhandling from former patients was better than cutting advertising and risking any negative coverage.