No~~body~~ kidney wants to work anymore
I do have government funded insurance so I will pay less than $200. Which I will only be able to afford if I pass Go.
Man, in Australia I had a very different experience for a much worse situation.
I had endocarditis, a heart infection. It was a bacteria called Streptococcus Sanguinis, a common mouth bacteria, which had gotten into my bloodstream probably through me biting my cheek and found its way to my heart. It then proceeded to eat a heart valve and spread to my lungs. I found all this out after gradually getting sicker, finding myself unable to breath, then having sudden oral thrush (a classic sign of immune failure). I drove to the hospital and parked then walked to the emergency room from the carpark about 30 metres (95 feet) away. It took 4 stops for breath to make it in.
The doctor listened to my left lung, made a face of "Oh dear", listened to the right lung, "Oh dear again", then listened to my heart and had a slightly wide eyed moment. Not the response you want. They could hear my heart was working overtime, running at about 140bpm while resting in the bed. It turns out I had about 75% regurgitation, meaning to get one heart pump worth of flow my heart had to do four pumps. Still, I was quite fit, so I was able to walk and talk etc, but my O2 was dropping, pushing down to under 90% which is not ideal. I had all the diagnostics including quite a few xrays, ct scans, ultrasounds, and similar tests. Lots and lots of blood tests (several a day for about 2 months) along with specific testing for what the culprit was, what antibiotic resistances it has, and therefore which antibiotic would be best. I had open heart surgery and got a synthetic valve along with removing the infected valve and clearing remaining junk (bacterial lumps which could hold bacteria and potentially start a second infection later). I got flown across the country and back for the surgery and had over 2 months of hospital stay with 24x7 care and feeding.
Total cost to me was what I spent at vending machines.
The situation in the USA is insane and needs to change. The only major country with privatised health care and the only country that thinks it is normal to have people face medical bankruptcy.
Medical bankruptcy is basically standard procedure… even with “insurance”
That...blows my mind. Wow.
It sounds like you have left the hospital though - if so, I am really glad you are doing better. That situation sounds terrifying. When I started reading I thought maybe from a dental procedure - I never considered it could happen from cheek biting. That's good information to have.
New Zealand, similar story; my wife has been in hospital 3 times in the last 5 years - twice needing surgery - totalling about 20 days in hospital. The only out of pocket expenses were parking and getting food delivered for me because I'm picky and didn't want what they had in the cafeteria.
Yeah, it was about a year ago, surgery was August 4th 2023 so it is recent but I have had a solid recovery. I am at the gym doing weights, running around, honestly feeling better than I have in years. The suggestion from the cardiologist is I may have had a bicuspid or just dodgy valve and that made it more susceptible to infection, so I may have been running on borrowed time for years anyway. Still, I love my new valve, I take warfarin to manage clotting risk, and life is just generally better than before. It did force me to move on from my job delivering groceries and towards nursing, but that is not because of physical consequences, just a recognition of the finite nature of time.
Also, when I am in a quiet room I sound like a bomb from a cartoon, just tick tick tick, so that's awesome.
UK here. I had a similar day to you, but it turned out to be a very severe case of double pneumonia, caused by an undiagnosed autoimmune disease. I had multiple organ failure, was put into a medically induced coma, and was hospitalised for about two months.
14 years later, I've had countless tests and scans, and had a kidney transplant. Like you, I've only ever paid for things like parking and meals that I chose to buy.
The fact that people defend the American system is beyond my understanding 🤷🏻♂️
Damn right! I loved the NHS when I lived in the UK. I broke my ankle when I was a kid over there, same deal, into the hospital, xrays, cast, etc, not a cent out of pocket for my family. I got a nice pair of crutches on load which I returned at the end and even got to try using a wheelchair when we went to Tesco because I stacked it (Aussie slang for fell over badly) on the way in on my crutches and they panicked, so yay for new experiences! Overall, 10/10 would recommend the NHS as of 1998, and the Australian Medicare system as of the rest of my experiences (2007, 2012, 2023) which resulted in hospitalisation.
Uhh I bite my cheeks a lot. I should probably stop huh?
Yeah, if possible. If you find you bite them a lot check for ADHD, Autism, underbite, overbite, and any other swelling like around the neck. I have ADHD and am autistic and also have a very mild overbite, but meds for the ADHD are honestly the biggest improvement for me.
Long time ago I read, if you have trouble paying hospital bills, you should tell them and it's likely they can change it to instalments (or even reduce the bill, but that was for someone who didn't even have insurance)
7k for a noncontrast CT scan is absurd. As is the $700 CMP. And then charging around $1900 for nurses to hang IV fluids and two medications when the ER visit itself is only billed at $1700? Bonkers.
When I look up surgical code payback numbers, my 1-2 hour surgeries rarely top $3k. So this hospital is really reaching with some of its numbers.
The line items look like a pretty standard "workup", as they call it. The blood and urine tests are probably a fishing expedition to make sure you don't have some other bizarre disease. If it turns out you did have this hypothetical bizarre disease, I'm sure you'd be disappointed if the emergency department missed it.
$7k CT seems pretty steep, but CTs are also a marvel of modern technology. I know MRIs have a price floor because they need medical grade liquid helium for cooling, which is thousands per liter. I don't know if CT has a similar consumable item or not.
I would hazard a guess that most real kidney stones would be revealed by x ray. But it's also possible that x ray would not reveal other physiological abnormalities that could be causing your symptoms.
In Poland if you pay out of pocket in a private clinic an MRI is around 500USD and a CT scan costs around 300USD, so the price floor is something lower than that. This is a country that will have a higher minimum wage than the US from January 2025.
This is fair. I think the prices I am most annoyed by are for the pregnancy test and the ondansetron. But you're right, I am very glad it wasn't something serious (especially since they ruled out a kidney stone - that's not something I want to deal with again lol). The one thing I am grateful for is that I don't have to pay before they will help. I don't think it's like that everywhere and it's definitely not like that for my pets either, which I could also spend time complaining about but I will refrain lol