>sodium chloride 3 % nebu soln - qty 33@$104 total $3,432
Ouch. $104 for 3ml of saline that goes in a nebulizer. These are $0.16 if you buy them yourself ($16 for a pack of 100).
The cost of two weeks in an pediatric/infant ICU
71–80 of 294 posts
Re: The cost of two weeks in an pediatric/infant ICU
#72This hits home for me.. my son (now 4 years old) was born very premature at 29 weeks and some change. He spent 7 weeks and 4 days in the NICU. The total hospital bill that was charged to insurance (before settling it between themselves) was roughly 960_000$. If you include the additional services and whatnot in the few months following being discharged from the hospital he was a million dollar baby. Complete insanity…
By what metric have things gotten better since the ACA?
Well for one, my son could be labelled as having a pre-existing condition as a result of the premature birth.
Re: The cost of two weeks in an pediatric/infant ICU
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
> as if other countries with universal healthcare have people dying while waiting in line for care This absolutely does happen in the UK, although I'd pick our health over the US's any day of the week.
It's also worth mentioning that private health care and insurance both exist in the UK. Individuals still get the choice to go to any private doctor they want, they'll just have to pay for it themselves. Just like the US, except the NHS provides an excellent safety net for everyone without private insurance or the means to pay for private care.
In most cases its the same doctors working in private hospitals and for the NHS.
Re: The cost of two weeks in an pediatric/infant ICU
#74I don't understand how people can be so anti-universal healthcare in the US. When you have an $8k deductible, your insurance is basically a gift to the CEO's yacht fund.
The issue is less about coverage and more about the insane, opaque, and fradulent medical care pricing in the US. No other industry has such a black box cost structure to it.
Coverage is very important, but it must be done in tandem with cost transparency and freedom to choose different insurance plans.
Re: The cost of two weeks in an pediatric/infant ICU
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your comment misses the point. There are two reasons why this bill is so high: 1. Some doctors and some hospitals are make tremendous amount of money - hospital revenue is about $1T and doctor revenue is about .5T. 2. This country has an insatiable demand for expensive healthcare. There’s no country with universal coverage where a child with little chance for survival would have received this level of care.
The UK gives this level of care to many people routinely.
It also does so to anyone who needs it regardless of ability to pay, and at overall half the cost of health care per person in the population compared to the US. You can also still pay for enhanced private health care if you want.
Re: The cost of two weeks in an pediatric/infant ICU
#76I don't understand how people can be so anti-universal healthcare in the US. When you have an $8k deductible, your insurance is basically a gift to the CEO's yacht fund.
Because in the US, if you're reasonably healthy, employed, live in a city with good hospitals and have private insurance, it "feels" better. It's easier to get better care.
I'm Canadian, now living in the US, and I'll be honest: for the first couple of years, where I had some medium sized health issues, the US system felt so much better. The hospital I was treated at was leagues better than anything I saw in Canada. The amount I had to pay on my paychecks was lower than the complementary insurance I had in Canada. I had dental insurance everywhere I worked! My teeth are a trainwreck from the years I didn't have access to good dental insurance).
So if someone was to dig in my old social media posts, they'd see my old stance of "I would prefer universal healthcare because its more fair, but if I was only thinking about myself, the US system is better".
Then, as anyone who knows better could have predicted, it went downhill and I was proven wrong. If you have something that's hard to diagnose, the insurance starts fighting against you/your provider to get lesser care (eg: getting a full sleep study is super hard because insurance companies will just want you to take a cheap at home sleep apnea test. If you have a sleep disorder that's not sleep apnea, good fucking luck).
Some providers will not talk to you if they're not in contract with your insurance. Good luck getting behavioral health care. Lots of clinics are in bed with very specific insurance, and will not even take self pay. So you have to call 15 of them because even the ones on your insurer's website may not want to speak with you.
The paperwork. Holy shit the paperwork. I had surgery once, and I was still getting bills for it 6 months later. SO MANY BILLS. Some of them were absolute bullshit, but who has time to call insurance and hospitals over and over and over to fight every single one when there's douzens for a single procedure. So I just paid the co-insurance fees and suck it up. I never had a way to tell when I was getting "the last bill".
In the end, I'm reasonably well off, and I have pretty much the best insurance one can have (no deductible, no employee contribution on paycheck, covers virtually everything), and it's STILL a pain in the ass. A pain enough that I've offered some providers to just pay cash to avoid the bullshit. THEY SAID NO and sent me on my way.
Oh, and if I want to start a business, work for a pre-seed startup, or just want to take some time between jobs, I need to coordinate with my significant other to make sure they are not planning on quitting any time soon so we don't have to deal with COBRA or worse.
Yeah, give me the Canadian system any day now.
Re: The cost of two weeks in an pediatric/infant ICU
#77This hits home for me.. my son (now 4 years old) was born very premature at 29 weeks and some change. He spent 7 weeks and 4 days in the NICU. The total hospital bill that was charged to insurance (before settling it between themselves) was roughly 960_000$. If you include the additional services and whatnot in the few months following being discharged from the hospital he was a million dollar baby. Complete insanity…
By what metric have things gotten better since the ACA?
availability, coverage, cost
Re: The cost of two weeks in an pediatric/infant ICU
#78I don't understand how people can be so anti-universal healthcare in the US. When you have an $8k deductible, your insurance is basically a gift to the CEO's yacht fund.
Your comment misses the point. There are two reasons why this bill is so high: 1. Some doctors and some hospitals are make tremendous amount of money - hospital revenue is about $1T and doctor revenue is about .5T. 2. This country has an insatiable demand for expensive healthcare. There’s no country with universal coverage where a child with little chance for survival would have received this level of care.
>There’s no country with universal coverage where a child with little chance for survival would have received this level of care.
You have a source for that claim? Two weeks in the nicu is not that long tbh.
Re: The cost of two weeks in an pediatric/infant ICU
#79For those unfamiliar with the weirdness of the US insurance system: Nobody pays the prices on these bills. This is a pre-insurance bill with inflated values: > Why am I sharing one of her (pre-insurance) bills? Insurance companies have negotiated maximum allowed prices for every line item on this bill. Different insurance companies will have different negotiated rates. The insurance companies will pay either the mini…
Imagine if any other market operated like this. You walk into BestBuy and the price of a TV is $50,000. But if you take it to the cashier you will be charged some lesser amount based on what your credit card company negotiated with BestBuy. Madness.
This kind of actually does describe buying a car in the US. It is generally not permitted to buy directly from the manufacturer, so you need to go through a dealer. It is kind of messed up presently, but in normal times there isn't really a "vehicle shortage" or whatever it is getting called now. The advertised price can be completely disconnected from the actual price you pay.
Re: The cost of two weeks in an pediatric/infant ICU
#80This hits home for me.. my son (now 4 years old) was born very premature at 29 weeks and some change. He spent 7 weeks and 4 days in the NICU. The total hospital bill that was charged to insurance (before settling it between themselves) was roughly 960_000$. If you include the additional services and whatnot in the few months following being discharged from the hospital he was a million dollar baby. Complete insanity…
That's insane. At most it would have cost just a few thousand in many countries in Asia with comparable medical competencies. So is there a new strategy of going to non-western countries to deliver babies and have expensive surgeries?
Of course I don't need to mention that in Canada and most countries in Europe this wouldn't have even been an issue. That would be pedantic. /s