6 ms·

I shared my toddler's hospital bill on Twitter

60 points by joshrotenberg 9y ago

BrandoElFollito 9y ago
This is one of the reasons I love my country (France) : because I do not even have a bill to tweet. Literally : there is no obvious financial trace of serious medical items. Sure, when I go to the emergency with my child and his swollen ankle, I get charged 28€ (IIRC), which later get reinbursed. This is the highest medical bill I can think of (except dental and optical). A 100,000€ bill would not appear anywhere.
petraeus 9y ago
The are children, orphans, families, whole societies that live worse than even the poorest of americans. Sickening.
mnm1 9y ago
It's depressing to me to think that people hate others so much that they would go to such great lengths to keep others from getting healthcare and ensure their demise. These same people would have no problem accepting healthcare from others if it was their lives that were in danger. I truly cannot fathom the hypocrisy, hate, and cruelty that must exist in these people's hearts towards their fellow citizens.
- divbit 9y ago
  It is really such a sad story - I'm glad that this mother seems to have been able to get her costs down at least (if I read the story correctly), sad that probably there are others that can't. We must all learn to love and forgive one another
- wyager 9y ago
  In what way does wanting to keep what I earn mean I "hate others"? I feel sad when I walk by homeless people, but I don't stop and give them everything I can afford until I'm impoverished. Do you? If not, why do you hate others so much that you want to "keep them from getting housing"? Hopefully you see why your argument is disingenuous. If you're really so hard on hypocrisy, you should go out right now and give every last penny to someone else's medical expenses. Or are you only generous enough to spend other people's money?
  - siidooloo 9y ago
    Maybe you didn't read the story but people were sending her death threats.
    - tnzn 9y ago
      who cares about reading the whole story w hen you're a libertarian (not you) who thinks every penny he makes is due to his own merit and he is entitled to this no matter the life of others though :/
      - wyager 9y ago
        Ah, I see you're of the much more enlightened opinion that everything you earn is due to and owned by the government, and anything they let you have is due to their own benevolence and good grace.
    - wyager 9y ago
      Maybe you didn't read the GP's comment but that's not what we're talking about.
  - nicky0 9y ago
    No one is suggesting anyone should give every last cent to others. The idea is that if everyone gives a small amount, then a large amount becomes available those unfortunate few that need it.
    - wyager 9y ago
      Have you looked at expected lifetime medical cost data? Please do so. It's not "a small amount". And where do we draw the line? We could spend an arbitrary amount of money pushing medicine down the diminishing returns curve until we bankrupt the entire society.
      - nicky0 9y ago
        You could if your were stupid, yes. Or you could put on your big boy pants as a country and put together an effective and humane healthcare system. Yes, compromises have to be made, you can't cover absolutely everything. Socialised medicine works successfully in other countries to the US, including my own. That's the only data point I need.
Aloha 9y ago
Part of why healthcare is so expensive today, is we're capable of saving so many more lives than before. As little as a generation ago, many more would have died, people who now go on to live fruitful productive lives.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  America spends more per capita than any other first world country for worse outcomes [1]. Healthcare is expensive because of the profit motive. Single payer isn't implemented for (mostly) the same reason. 60% of Americans want single payer [2]. "A majority of Americans say it is the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have health care coverage. And a growing share now supports a “single payer” approach to health insurance, according to a new national survey by Pew Research Center. Currently, 60% say the federal government is responsible for ensuring health care coverage for all Americans, while 39% say this is not the government’s responsibility. These views are unchanged from January, but the share saying health coverage is a government responsibility remains at its highest level in nearly a decade. Among those who see a government responsibility to provide health coverage for all, more now say it should be provided through a single health insurance system run by the government, rather than through a mix of private companies and government programs. Overall, 33% of the public now favors such a “single payer” approach to health insurance, up 5 percentage points since January and 12 points since 2014. Democrats – especially liberal Democrats – are much more supportive of this approach than they were even at the start of this year. Even among those who say the federal government is not responsible for ensuring Americans have health care coverage, there is little public appetite for government withdrawing entirely from involvement in health care coverage. Among the public, 33% say that health care coverage is not the government’s responsibility, but that programs like Medicare and Medicaid should be continued; just 5% of Americans say the government should not be involved at all in providing health insurance." Emphasis mine. [1] http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/04/20/524774195/what-country-spends-the-most-and-least-on-health-care-per-person http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/04/20/52477419... [2] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/23/public-support-for-single-payer-health-coverage-grows-driven-by-democrats/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/23/public-suppo...
quantummkv 9y ago
Am i missing something in here or are the costs in that bill really this high? $22,526 for room boarding for 2 weeks? Over here in India my grandma's bypass surgery costed somewhat about $10,000. That included everything including the stent, medicines and boarding, that too at a renowned, premiere private hospital. Is this a special case or are healthcare costs generally this high in America?
- justboxing 9y ago
  > are healthcare costs generally this high in America Yes they are ridiculously high, even after factoring in cost of living / currency rates or as a %age of monthly salary, if you are comparing it to costs in a different country. 1 month after coming here (to America) from India (1999) I had to get wax from my left ear cleaned as it was blocking my hearing. They squirted some liquid in my ear and got the wax out. 2 weeks later, I got the insurance Statement. It cost $ 800. I was astonished. In India a year before, I'd paid a Doc 100 Rupees (at that time, $2 equivalent in USD) for the same exact thing. A month later, I had a chest x-ray taken, and some weird quirk in insurance it wasn't covered. So I had to boot the bill. $ 576 for 1 single chest x-ray. My take home at that time as a software engineer was about 2500 / month after tax and deductions, so this was 23% of my paycheck! Health Insurance coverage is too closely tied to employment. In order to get continued coverage, you are more or less working "for the man" till you die.
  - tehlike 9y ago
    If you or on high deductible plan, consider hsa :)
    - throwaway2016a 9y ago
      Depending on his tax rate with HSA a $1000 bill would still be $750 after the tex savings. Hardly an improvement.
  - dogma1138 9y ago
    That's what you get when most bills are either unpaid or paid at cents on the dollar by insurance companies.
hkmurakami 9y ago
> It was eye-opening to see just how low our discourse has sunk, to be forced to acknowledge that what passes for debate in the age of the internet is often nothing more than spewing venom at the other side. How are we ever supposed to find a solution that’s better than either Trumpcare or Obamacare if we can’t even shut up long enough to recognize the humanity in the people on the other side of the debate? So people on one side of the fence are not happy about the very high medical costs required to keep a child alive. They do not understand the humanity behind the numbers. On the other side of the fence are parents who are not happy that some people think their child is an excessive burden on the system. They (understandably) do not understand (or at the least, are looking away from) the numbers behind making their child viable. The author correctly identifies one side's shortcoming wrt balanced discourse, but does not see the blindness of her own implied position -- that no cost is too high to save a life. Nowhere in this piece does she broach the subject of numbers and real cost [1]. Finding balance is very difficult in any area, especially in areas where you only have _one shot_ (an example is your child's education, where many parents feel that no amount of investment is enough, and more is always better). But since the system does not have infinite resources, it's a necessary conversation to have (which the author could have brought up, but failed to do so -- understandably, since this article is a strategic opinion piece meant to further the author's self-interest, which I completely respect). A billion dollars to save a child's life, we would likely agree, is too much. $1,000, we would likely agree, is entirely justified. Where we draw the line, why, and how we get there (of urgent need is our relationship with end of life care and treatments) is an important conversation that we are failing to have, and those of us on both sides of the fence are equally culpable for this shortcoming. [1] The large 6 figure bill and post insurance $500 bill is only used qualitatively in the introduction.
- lstamour 9y ago
  Who sets the numbers and why, though? How much is profit, how much should be profit, when it comes to human health and rehabilitation whether mental or physical assistance is required? Or, ignoring profit, why take away public funding to programs for poor people just to provide tax breaks to rich folks? How much is a dollar worth to each individual, relatively-speaking? There are few easy answers, except (almost) everybody wants to see costs lower to the levels they are in other countries. Setting price or profit caps and limits is one method, ensuring the system can’t ask for inflated amounts from insurers is another. This could affect quality of service, but then again, it might not. All stores might charge the same price for some brand name item but not all stores offer equal customer service or trained staff... The same is surely true of medical facilities.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
Based on the background of the mother, she would have been able to have had insurance even without Obamacare, and would have still been able to have insurance no matter what the Republican Congress passes. In this situation, no matter what the government did, her child would still have been able to get the necessary surgery. In addition, Boston Children's Hospital is one of the premier hospitals in the world. Given the specialized nature of the problem and the fact that heterotaxy cases are pretty rare, even without insurance, the chances are high that the child would still have been treated and the hospital would have eaten the cost. Thus, pre/post/no Obamacare, the child still would have had the treatment. Thus, you cannot derive a political position from this case.
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  I am assuming that your statements are correct. However, if we examine the author's motives, she seeks a society where any child who shares her son's ailment (or other life threatening but treatable -- albeit expensively -- diseases) can receive treatment, whether or not they share her fortunate circumstances or not. In that light her rhetorical strategy remains reasonable.
- secabeen 9y ago
  I'm not so sure that's true. While it's likely that the mother would have had insurance pre-Obamacare, it could have very easily had a lifetime maximum. Given that this is his 4th surgery (at $200k each), plus NICU and other costs from his birth, and they are probably looking at at least $1mil in total expenses so far. In a pre-Obamacare world, they could be reaching the end of the funds available for his care.
holydude 9y ago
In my country somewhere in europe you pay ridiculous taxes and you cannot opt out. The healthcare is shit, corrupt and if you want good care when they do not treat you like shit you need to go private and pay extra. Beware americans with your mentality you end up paying more ans getting less with programs like obamacare.
- callalex 9y ago
  [citation needed]
everdayimhustln 9y ago
Bots and unthinking cyberdisinhibited people competively flame and troll whomever is the current punching-bag for brownie points, schadenfreude and negative attention seeking behavior.

60 points by joshrotenberg 9y ago

This is one of the reasons I love my country (France) : because I do not even have a bill to tweet. Literally : there is no obvious financial trace of serious medical items. Sure, when I go to the emergency with my child and his swollen ankle, I get charged 28€ (IIRC), which later get reinbursed. This is the highest medical bill I can think of (except dental and optical). A 100,000€ bill would not appear anywhere.

petraeus 9y ago

The are children, orphans, families, whole societies that live worse than even the poorest of americans. Sickening.

mnm1 9y ago

It's depressing to me to think that people hate others so much that they would go to such great lengths to keep others from getting healthcare and ensure their demise. These same people would have no problem accepting healthcare from others if it was their lives that were in danger. I truly cannot fathom the hypocrisy, hate, and cruelty that must exist in these people's hearts towards their fellow citizens.

divbit 9y ago
It is really such a sad story - I'm glad that this mother seems to have been able to get her costs down at least (if I read the story correctly), sad that probably there are others that can't. We must all learn to love and forgive one another
wyager 9y ago
In what way does wanting to keep what I earn mean I "hate others"? I feel sad when I walk by homeless people, but I don't stop and give them everything I can afford until I'm impoverished. Do you? If not, why do you hate others so much that you want to "keep them from getting housing"? Hopefully you see why your argument is disingenuous. If you're really so hard on hypocrisy, you should go out right now and give every last penny to someone else's medical expenses. Or are you only generous enough to spend other people's money?
- siidooloo 9y ago
  Maybe you didn't read the story but people were sending her death threats.
  - tnzn 9y ago
    who cares about reading the whole story w hen you're a libertarian (not you) who thinks every penny he makes is due to his own merit and he is entitled to this no matter the life of others though :/
    - wyager 9y ago
      Ah, I see you're of the much more enlightened opinion that everything you earn is due to and owned by the government, and anything they let you have is due to their own benevolence and good grace.
  - wyager 9y ago
    Maybe you didn't read the GP's comment but that's not what we're talking about.
- nicky0 9y ago
  No one is suggesting anyone should give every last cent to others. The idea is that if everyone gives a small amount, then a large amount becomes available those unfortunate few that need it.
  - wyager 9y ago
    Have you looked at expected lifetime medical cost data? Please do so. It's not "a small amount". And where do we draw the line? We could spend an arbitrary amount of money pushing medicine down the diminishing returns curve until we bankrupt the entire society.
    - nicky0 9y ago
      You could if your were stupid, yes. Or you could put on your big boy pants as a country and put together an effective and humane healthcare system. Yes, compromises have to be made, you can't cover absolutely everything. Socialised medicine works successfully in other countries to the US, including my own. That's the only data point I need.

Aloha 9y ago

Part of why healthcare is so expensive today, is we're capable of saving so many more lives than before. As little as a generation ago, many more would have died, people who now go on to live fruitful productive lives.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
America spends more per capita than any other first world country for worse outcomes [1]. Healthcare is expensive because of the profit motive. Single payer isn't implemented for (mostly) the same reason. 60% of Americans want single payer [2]. "A majority of Americans say it is the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have health care coverage. And a growing share now supports a “single payer” approach to health insurance, according to a new national survey by Pew Research Center. Currently, 60% say the federal government is responsible for ensuring health care coverage for all Americans, while 39% say this is not the government’s responsibility. These views are unchanged from January, but the share saying health coverage is a government responsibility remains at its highest level in nearly a decade. Among those who see a government responsibility to provide health coverage for all, more now say it should be provided through a single health insurance system run by the government, rather than through a mix of private companies and government programs. Overall, 33% of the public now favors such a “single payer” approach to health insurance, up 5 percentage points since January and 12 points since 2014. Democrats – especially liberal Democrats – are much more supportive of this approach than they were even at the start of this year. Even among those who say the federal government is not responsible for ensuring Americans have health care coverage, there is little public appetite for government withdrawing entirely from involvement in health care coverage. Among the public, 33% say that health care coverage is not the government’s responsibility, but that programs like Medicare and Medicaid should be continued; just 5% of Americans say the government should not be involved at all in providing health insurance." Emphasis mine. [1] http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/04/20/524774195/what-country-spends-the-most-and-least-on-health-care-per-person http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/04/20/52477419... [2] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/23/public-support-for-single-payer-health-coverage-grows-driven-by-democrats/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/23/public-suppo...

quantummkv 9y ago

Am i missing something in here or are the costs in that bill really this high? $22,526 for room boarding for 2 weeks? Over here in India my grandma's bypass surgery costed somewhat about $10,000. That included everything including the stent, medicines and boarding, that too at a renowned, premiere private hospital. Is this a special case or are healthcare costs generally this high in America?

justboxing 9y ago
> are healthcare costs generally this high in America Yes they are ridiculously high, even after factoring in cost of living / currency rates or as a %age of monthly salary, if you are comparing it to costs in a different country. 1 month after coming here (to America) from India (1999) I had to get wax from my left ear cleaned as it was blocking my hearing. They squirted some liquid in my ear and got the wax out. 2 weeks later, I got the insurance Statement. It cost $ 800. I was astonished. In India a year before, I'd paid a Doc 100 Rupees (at that time, $2 equivalent in USD) for the same exact thing. A month later, I had a chest x-ray taken, and some weird quirk in insurance it wasn't covered. So I had to boot the bill. $ 576 for 1 single chest x-ray. My take home at that time as a software engineer was about 2500 / month after tax and deductions, so this was 23% of my paycheck! Health Insurance coverage is too closely tied to employment. In order to get continued coverage, you are more or less working "for the man" till you die.
- tehlike 9y ago
  If you or on high deductible plan, consider hsa :)
  - throwaway2016a 9y ago
    Depending on his tax rate with HSA a $1000 bill would still be $750 after the tex savings. Hardly an improvement.
- dogma1138 9y ago
  That's what you get when most bills are either unpaid or paid at cents on the dollar by insurance companies.

hkmurakami 9y ago

> It was eye-opening to see just how low our discourse has sunk, to be forced to acknowledge that what passes for debate in the age of the internet is often nothing more than spewing venom at the other side. How are we ever supposed to find a solution that’s better than either Trumpcare or Obamacare if we can’t even shut up long enough to recognize the humanity in the people on the other side of the debate? So people on one side of the fence are not happy about the very high medical costs required to keep a child alive. They do not understand the humanity behind the numbers. On the other side of the fence are parents who are not happy that some people think their child is an excessive burden on the system. They (understandably) do not understand (or at the least, are looking away from) the numbers behind making their child viable. The author correctly identifies one side's shortcoming wrt balanced discourse, but does not see the blindness of her own implied position -- that no cost is too high to save a life. Nowhere in this piece does she broach the subject of numbers and real cost [1]. Finding balance is very difficult in any area, especially in areas where you only have _one shot_ (an example is your child's education, where many parents feel that no amount of investment is enough, and more is always better). But since the system does not have infinite resources, it's a necessary conversation to have (which the author could have brought up, but failed to do so -- understandably, since this article is a strategic opinion piece meant to further the author's self-interest, which I completely respect). A billion dollars to save a child's life, we would likely agree, is too much. $1,000, we would likely agree, is entirely justified. Where we draw the line, why, and how we get there (of urgent need is our relationship with end of life care and treatments) is an important conversation that we are failing to have, and those of us on both sides of the fence are equally culpable for this shortcoming. [1] The large 6 figure bill and post insurance $500 bill is only used qualitatively in the introduction.

lstamour 9y ago
Who sets the numbers and why, though? How much is profit, how much should be profit, when it comes to human health and rehabilitation whether mental or physical assistance is required? Or, ignoring profit, why take away public funding to programs for poor people just to provide tax breaks to rich folks? How much is a dollar worth to each individual, relatively-speaking? There are few easy answers, except (almost) everybody wants to see costs lower to the levels they are in other countries. Setting price or profit caps and limits is one method, ensuring the system can’t ask for inflated amounts from insurers is another. This could affect quality of service, but then again, it might not. All stores might charge the same price for some brand name item but not all stores offer equal customer service or trained staff... The same is surely true of medical facilities.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago

Based on the background of the mother, she would have been able to have had insurance even without Obamacare, and would have still been able to have insurance no matter what the Republican Congress passes. In this situation, no matter what the government did, her child would still have been able to get the necessary surgery. In addition, Boston Children's Hospital is one of the premier hospitals in the world. Given the specialized nature of the problem and the fact that heterotaxy cases are pretty rare, even without insurance, the chances are high that the child would still have been treated and the hospital would have eaten the cost. Thus, pre/post/no Obamacare, the child still would have had the treatment. Thus, you cannot derive a political position from this case.

hkmurakami 9y ago
I am assuming that your statements are correct. However, if we examine the author's motives, she seeks a society where any child who shares her son's ailment (or other life threatening but treatable -- albeit expensively -- diseases) can receive treatment, whether or not they share her fortunate circumstances or not. In that light her rhetorical strategy remains reasonable.
secabeen 9y ago
I'm not so sure that's true. While it's likely that the mother would have had insurance pre-Obamacare, it could have very easily had a lifetime maximum. Given that this is his 4th surgery (at $200k each), plus NICU and other costs from his birth, and they are probably looking at at least $1mil in total expenses so far. In a pre-Obamacare world, they could be reaching the end of the funds available for his care.

holydude 9y ago

In my country somewhere in europe you pay ridiculous taxes and you cannot opt out. The healthcare is shit, corrupt and if you want good care when they do not treat you like shit you need to go private and pay extra. Beware americans with your mentality you end up paying more ans getting less with programs like obamacare.

callalex 9y ago
[citation needed]

everdayimhustln 9y ago

Bots and unthinking cyberdisinhibited people competively flame and troll whomever is the current punching-bag for brownie points, schadenfreude and negative attention seeking behavior.