My wife and I just got the bill for our daughter’s appendectomy 2 weeks ago.
$21,000.
For less than two days in the hospital, an ambulance ride, and a 45 minute, routine surgery without complications.
Surgery was about $6,500, anesthesia another $2,000. There was also a bill for $2,500 for the meds.
By “meds,” I mean “Tylenol and morphine.”
$2,500 worth of Tylenol and morphine? You’d think that was one hell of a party, wouldn’t you? But in reality it was maybe 6 kiddie-sized doses of the big stuff. So, what, $400 per micro-drip? And a coupla two, three Tylenols?
Please.
My wife and I are insured, so our responsibility is far less than the bill. Thank God.
We’re lucky.
We know a lot of other people aren’t.
Which is why I think what is happening in Congress this week is disgusting.
Are there parts of this bill that I don’t like? Absolutely. In fact, I think there are elements of the bill which are dangerous.
The answer isn’t to shut down Congress like a bunch of whiny little bitches or whip up talk radio zombie listeners into a frothy, hate-filled lather.
The answer is to say, when private enterprise is sending out a $21,000 bill for less than 48 hours of routine care, they’ve failed big time. Now let’s take advantage of the fact that the wheels of change are spinning. We’ve broken the back of the status quo—that was the first step, and that’s a good thing—and now we can see if we can improve upon the bill we just passed.
Less cowardly lashing out, more courageously moving forward.
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I'm Jason. I make people shine. My mission is to help 1 million people tell their stories better. 
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice one, Jason. We recently spent one night in an ER with our newborn and the bill was over $10,000. We were even billed by a doctor who was the attending but I don’t think ever actually did anything with our daughter. The hospital staff was excellent but I note that it took two nurses to figure out how to draw blood from the baby (the first one failed to get any in three tries) and that we sat for hours before anyone even began to do anything with us (other than bring us to a room and do paperwork). Again thankful for being insured but can’t figure out how they got to that number in the first place. At least this particular hospital had a very nice offer in the bill, where you could basically pay over 12 or 24 months without any interest charges. But I think that’s quite the exception rather than the rule.
We had quite a laugh the other night during a C-SPAN call-in when someone opposed to the bill said “I don’t really want health insurance”. Really? Really? There is a human who thinks they are better off not having health insurance because it actually might cost them money (and they watch C-SPAN)? I suppose there are people struggling to make ends meet and have to decide what they can afford and what not, and that’s precisely why we needed to pass this law.
Thanks for sharing some cogent thoughts. There’s a great “open letter to Republicans” about the “shut down Congress” etc. points on Talking Points Memo that I think speaks to that as well.
The reason you were billed $2500 for children’s meds is because the hospital is charging for the Medicare, Medicaid, illegal aliens using their emergency ward for general health care, and other people who just don’t pay their medical bills.
Example: a MD Specialist charges $700.00 for an office visit and Medicaid pays this MD only $60.00. Who do you think pays the remaining $640.00? Well, you just found out that YOU make up this difference, along with other people who have PRIVATE health insurance. And this is just one office visit for one Medicaid patient. What happens if that Medicaid patient goes back for another office visit? Well, the MD Specialist loses another $640.00. This happens for each Medicaid patient the MD Specialist sees as one of his patients.
Walgreen’s in Wash. state will no longer take prescriptions from Medicaid patients because Walgreen’s is losing money on Medicaid patients.
You start adding in additional costs with illegal aliens using the Emergency Room to treat a cold and people who don’t pay their medical bills and well, one wonders why you were not charged MORE for your medical care.
There has never been a single Govt. program that has not exceeded the original costs when it started and then needed bail outs and much higher taxes, rationed services, etc. to keep the program from going bankrupt. Social Security, Medicare, Welfare programs are all run away trains heading towards bankruptcy train wrecks if the Govt. doesn’t bail them out. Now we have a brand new program, ObamaCare, that will also need bailouts, perhaps as early as 4 – 5 years from now. When that happens, with all the $trillion spending by Obama that has already added to the US debt, the USA could seriously be heading into total bankruptcy, caused, in part, by ObamaCare.
The amount of US debt, if the bill went to each individual American, was $56,000 at the start of Obama’s Presidency. During the very short time Obama has been President, this debt has skyrocketed to $72,000 per person. Why isn’t Obama doing something to stop the run away spending that will push the USA into bankruptcy?
Action needs to be taken now to stop this spending or ObamaCare will collapse before anyone can even use it.
Great point, Jason. Here is what you now have to look forward to – the insurance company doing everything it can to avoid paying its portion of the bill. I had three surgeries last year and ended up paying over 100% more than what I was originally told it would cost me. The hospital/doctors and the insurance company play a game with each other. The hospital charges as much as it thinks the insurance will pay and the insurance company tries to pay as little as possible. It is a broken charade.
As someone else said, anyone that thinks they don’t need health insurance is full of shit. It only takes one large medical incident – which are unpredictable- to prove that without coverage you are hosed.
Bret
@Ed—When I was in college, I visited the hospital. I had mono, my tonsils were swollen to the point that it was hard for me to breathe. I got a bill for $5,000 because a gaggle of residents were in the room when one decided to take a look. And I’ve noticed that the industry hasn’t exactly done a good job improving itself (top article).
@Brian—Brian, so what’s your alternative solution here, to maintain the status quo and turn health care into a referendum on immigration policy? I just saw a very real bill for that. I can’t afford it, and neither can you. Saying that we should try to bar all illegal aliens from using our hospital systems tomorrow is a theory that does not survive contact with reality. Give me something that will.
@Bret—That’s the stuff that scares the daylights out of me. What I find absurd is that we’re already living in a world of rationing and out-of-control costs, yet the bozos in Washington are more interested in giving the issue a clever title (“ObamaCare”) and make it seem like it’s coming later, than in actually solving the problems we have right now today.
One thing in the bill (now law) that I very much agree with and support — insurance companies must spend at least 80-85% of premiums on actual patient care. Now naive little me would love to believe that means they’ll cut CEO salaries, reduce admin overhead, eliminate junkets. But then reality kicks in and I realize, who am I kidding. Premiums will just double or more to cover those expenses.
Sill like that part of bill. Just wish there was some way to force insurance co.s to behave responsibly.
@Lynette – There is a way. Complete socialization of health care. Creating an environment where health care is not a for-profit industry. The reality is that insuring your property makes sense as a profit-generating business, because most of us will never file a claim. Insuring your car makes sense, because most of us will never file major claims. Insuring your health for profit is a ridiculous concept, because ALL of us will need some form of medical care, and many of us will need extremely expensive services. It’s a guaranteed, 100% failure of the prime directive of the concept insurance-for-profit.
@Jason – Like you said, this is a step. Americans have proven historically that we don’t like having rights taken away. Now that these rights are here, they ain’t going anywhere. Opponents who are spitting out “repeal” messages are doing so to fill their campaign coffers, because it’s not going to happen. So let’s focus on evolving what we’ve got and making it better.
Couldn’t agree more Jason.
I think it is funny that we are throttling insurance companies when they have very little to do with the fact that the procedure cost 21k. If you think 21k is bad, you should see what cancer treatments look like. A pill about the same size as an Advil going for 9k each? If you folks are outraged by the insurance executives, you should see the lifestyles big pharma execs and big hospital administrators lead.
At best, this bill addresses a third of the problem. And politically, this was the easiest one to argue. Insurance companies are seen as parasites so it is easy to regulate them. When it comes to doctors and pharmaceuticals though, the road is a lot more difficult. If you think the insurance lobby has power, forget about it.
This bill will improve the lives some people. That’s good of course. I don’t necessarily want to lose sight of that and it isn’t the apocalypse or anything.
But to question whether this government has the intestinal fortitude to actually fix the health care system? Yeah, I’m in that camp. This bill does nothing long term to fix a currently broken system. It gives more people access to the system. A good thing in the short term.
My fear is that this is it. They were in a position to push through something unpopular but necessary and they dropped the ball on long term fixes and true systematic reform. You don’t get opportunities like that every day, especially with our government.
I am so disappointed.
Whew…you got off easy. My appendectomy a few years ago was $80,000. Yay for insurance. With the new HCR laws that would be even more expensive thanks to the medical device tax. Wait, I thought we were making healthcare MORE affordable? Fail.
I’m with Brian. How come everybody can pay their 100$ cellphone bills and cable/satelite TV. When it comes to health and education the two most important things we want a free ride. I”m all for government regulation and oversight to prevent crazy bills, but once you give someone a free lunch they become accustomed and entitled.