Thats an extraordinary amount of money for a pacemaker, its basically a day procedure here, day surgery followed by a night of observation and follow up outpatient appointments. I would assume the most expensive part of the procedure here would be the cost of the the pacemaker itself, the hospital staff and bed costs would be under 5,000 dollars. All of this is covered by the taxpayer by the way and is typically done within days of someone requiring it. For instance my mum went into hospital because she was having falls, they found that she needed a pacemaker and it was done the next day, due to her complex health problem they kept her in hospital for about a week.