Andrew got bitten by one of the feral kittens a few weeks ago, and the little shit managed to bite through one of Andrew's fingernails (amongst other puncture wounds in his hands).
Cat bites are notoriously dangerous because of the way the tooth is shaped - they are like needles injecting bacteria under the skin, and it heals over fast, which causes an infection, and before you know it you have blood poisoning.
I was worried that we wouldn't be able to clean out the puncture in his fingernail properly, so tried to book into the doctor to get onto a course of antibiotics. They couldn't squeeze us in, so we tried going to "Urgent Care", and they were closing, so told us just to go up to the ER.
If we had have got into the doctor it would have cost $10. We just got the hospital bill, and we are responsible for $415 of the total of $4000 or so. We spent maybe 10 minutes in there, and got a prescription for antibiotics and some antiseptic put on the puncture wounds. How the hell can that cost over $4000????? And how can they charge us $415 just for that??
We paid about $1200 for my open heart surgery - apparently a prescription and antibiotics is worth 1/3 of open heart surgery, ICU and a 5 day hospital stay...
If anyone wants to contribute to the Andrew and Sarah kitten fund - feel free to!
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Why the US healthcare system is ridiculous
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4 comments:
A 4 hour stay in the ER with a simple CAT scan, a couple labs, and talking to the doctor costs over $12,000 according to bills I saw recently.
I think, the main reason for these ridiculous prices is that many people going to the ER don't actually pay their bills, so the people that can pay are subsidizing the rest. Of course, that's an engineer trying to make sense of this. Since pretty much nothing makes sense in health care here, I'm not putting my hopes up.
Scary. Would have been free in Aus under Medicare. I'll have to be careful of my neighbour's cat!
By the way, Daisy is my favourite.
Take care of yourself. There are many many people who abuse the system and the rest of us have to pay for it. I'm sorry that it happened!
First, I want to say that I found your blog inspiring and I admire your spirit and sense of adventure and wish you the best.
On the craziness of the American medical industry and prices.. I think doctors, hospitals etc. in general do charge outrageous sums and it's not just because of people taking advantage of the system. People generally go to the doctor because they HAVE to, insured or not, not because it's good fun taking advantage of the system. Further the greed of various components of the medical industry that know insurance (and not people) will be footing the bill means that bills have gotten absolutely out of control.
I had to go to the doctor on a trip to India last year, and it was an eye opening experience. The quality of care was good (in Bangalore) and the bill was a tiny fraction of what it would have been here. Amazing.
-Sea
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