Yeah, I read what was involved in the surgery, and it just seems like stuff they already know how to do writ large. There wasn't anything new, just more of it.
As for that $100,000 figure, it has to represent only one of the costs involved; there's no way it covered everything. Your boyfriend's appendectomy cost about $20,000; my finger expenses are at $14,000 and rising. It is absolutely impossible that a complicated 27-hour surgery would cost only $100,000, not to mention all the prep, post-op care, and rehab.
I think Lakshmi has benefited from the extravagance of her deformity. If she had been less interestingly afflicted, I bet she would have been allowed to languish in her village. As it was, she was a fun project for a bunch of doctors who saw in her a puzzle they hadn't encountered before. Add to that her big brown eyes, the reincarnation crapola, and the freak show mentality that rules the world, and you get one big sexy stunt. Meanwhile thousands (millions?) of more familiarly miserable children die for lack of care.