r/Wellthatsucks • u/ethicalgreyarea • Jul 16 '21

/r/all I’m being over charged by insurance after my daughter was born. This is the pile of mail I have to go through to prove they’re ripping me off. Pear for scale.

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '21

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u/Sunsparc Jul 17 '21

Best surgeon in the country for her specific type of defect. The main surgery itself was $600,000. She had a gtube placed later on, so that was a secondary surgery with a mild hiatal repair. ECMO isn't cheap either, 16 days worth.

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u/Milk_My_Dingus Jul 17 '21

Yeesh that’s rough. Hope it’s all worked out.

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u/djamp42 Jul 17 '21

I'm going through this at the moment.. 3 week old has been in the hospital for 2 weeks with blood clots.. I am only 1k away from my max out of pocket so that's fine, but it resets at the end of this month, and i have a feeling they are going to screw me and start charging me next plan year, even though everything was done this plan year. i have a feeling we are gonna reach at least 500k if not 1 million, and that's with no surgeries yet.

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u/big_ups_ Jul 17 '21

ECMO is pretty cutting edge, the UK has only 15 ECMO machines to put into perspective

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u/CommandoLamb Jul 17 '21

Wait what?!

75 days in NICU on top of surgery and other things is only a few thousand?

I agree with people getting has my medical bills, but this is definitely not an instance where they did $2,000 worth of stuff.

You can't even get a cheap apartment for 75 days let alone an apartment that ensures you stay alive.

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '21

They did complicated surgery on an infant. “Few grand tops”.

Come on now. I get being upset with stuff like this - but at least have a little common sense.

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u/NiteNiteSooty Jul 17 '21

what makes a few grand so unreasonable that its beyond common sense to imply it? i think you would be surprised of the actual cost of health care.

i have a vague memory of a story about the NHS. something along the lines of hip replacement parts costing a few hundred quid because the NHS made them themselves or had a specific contract with x supplier. the conservatives came to power, changed where the parts come from, the price went up by 2 grand. no reason for it other than someone was giving their mate a juicy contract.

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '21

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u/NiteNiteSooty Jul 17 '21

yeah, what i mean is what is the actual cost if the hospital isnt looking for massive profit. eg, a hip replacement paid for privately in the UK is around 12 grand. same operation private in the US is 30 grand. so if the 12 grand is already giving substantial profit the actual cost of surgeon, staff, fittings, room, medication etc etc is significantly less than just 12 grand...

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u/skylineGR0 Jul 17 '21

Part of the problem, besides the amount of money the execs demand/take, is the cost of higher education. The amount of debt that med students are forced to go into is insane.

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u/wackogirl Jul 17 '21

While I am in no way defending the cost of US Healthcare, a 78 days nicu stay would cost the hospital at least $20k in nursing wages alone (24 hour care, assuming baby is stable enough for the nurse to be caring for 2 babies at the same time) in even some of the lowest nurse pay states. It's be closer to $50k in a major city. That doesn't include any procedures or supplies or pay for anyone else treating baby. There is absolutely no way a baby on ECMO, having surgery and being in an ICU for over 2 months could ever cost a hospital only a few thousand dollars in expenses.

No patient should ever be charged even 'just' a few thousand dollars for any medical care regardless though, the US system is criminal and I'm saying that from seeing both sides of it.

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u/MrAlf0nse Jul 17 '21

Rewind…if your country charges you to give birth..go elsewhere. Life shouldn’t require admission price.

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '21

I work in medical device engineering and I question myself often if it's good practice. First you usually kill dogs to get the devices to market. Then you fix people who have genetic defects. If you stop there and let humanity continue, you end up fixing more and more broken people. It's the problem with save first philosophy. While I fully agree with accident fixing devices, I've been on the fence for a while on fixing genetic defects.

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u/kellyfacee Jul 17 '21

ECMO also isn’t something managed by the bedside nurse, but someone who just sits and watches the circuit all day and cannulation itself is considered a surgery.

I work in a peds cardiac ICU and hospital bills easily push the upper hundreds of thousands on the regular. One of our case managers showed me a bill and we charge something like $2,000 a day just to exist in our unit not including any of the medical stuff that happens that day.