quick rant about hospital costs
Long story short, since I haven't actually posted about the surgery itself yet...about a week after *finally* getting home from the hospital, my son's heart "paused" (thier term) for 9-10 seconds, and he passed out. This resulted in a 2-3 hour stay in the local hospital, and a 286 mile ambulance ride back to Portland, where he got a pacemaker.
I got the ambulance bill on Friday (they send an actual bill, and make you bill your own insurance) and found it frighteningly large (almost $2200) but not unreasonable, given that it took a total of 24 hours of EMT time, plus all those miles.
I just got the insurance statement for the less than 3 hours he spent in the hospital, where they did nothing but hook him up to a heart monitor they proceded to ignore, fed him jello, and gave him 5mg of the perscription we'd forgotten to bring with us. The hospital wants 3084.34 for "room and board" and 530.21 for "misc services"! And the insurance is going to pay it, so it must be considered acceptable.
What do people without insurance do? What do we do if something happens to my husband, who is one of those people? Yikes!
I got the ambulance bill on Friday (they send an actual bill, and make you bill your own insurance) and found it frighteningly large (almost $2200) but not unreasonable, given that it took a total of 24 hours of EMT time, plus all those miles.
I just got the insurance statement for the less than 3 hours he spent in the hospital, where they did nothing but hook him up to a heart monitor they proceded to ignore, fed him jello, and gave him 5mg of the perscription we'd forgotten to bring with us. The hospital wants 3084.34 for "room and board" and 530.21 for "misc services"! And the insurance is going to pay it, so it must be considered acceptable.
What do people without insurance do? What do we do if something happens to my husband, who is one of those people? Yikes!