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Makes me sick

I hold in my hand the statement of charges for last month's trip to the ER. Here is the breakdown of what my insurance paid:

Ultrasound $2565
Emergency room $2646
Blood admin $458
Laboratory $1958
Laboratory $1813
Total payments $8640

A few things run through my mind as I examine this:
(1) For this much money, couldn't they have provided me with a long enough bed, an actual blanket, and perhaps a pillow? And is that $2646 "emergency room" charge so high because of the 4 hours I waited in the triage area, for the 4 hours I waited for lab results (even though we all knew what the hell was actually happening)? Or is this charge simply for the remarkably bad bedside manner of the napoleonic attending doc, who couldn't even bother to look at me when asking about my bleeding vadge and who seemed pissed off at me for wasting his time by miscarrying a 10-week-old fetus on his lunch break?

(2) Had I known the u/s was going to cost $2565, I would have asked her to check out the rest of my insides while she was at it. And I would have requested a glass of wine, since we were getting so intimate.

(3) What the heck are the two separate lab charges?

(4) This much money would cover enough groceries to feed my family for at least 2 years. Or pay for a month's vacation on the Mediterranean coast.

(5) Thank God for health insurance that requires me to only pay a $100 copay for an ER visit.

(6) There is something excruciatingly wrong with our healthcare system.

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Comments

  1. paddyandhenrysmomApril 28, 2009 at 8:23 AM

    Ugh, ugh, and more ugh. I didn't realize that on top of having a horrible reason for needing the ER that they treated you so reprehensibly. And yes, our health care system is seriously flawed, but thank God you didn't have to pay that whole bill, so the health insurance is worth something. I'm willing to bet one lab fee is for the test itself and the other is for "labor" or something outrageous like that.

    All this makes me wish I were under 18 since Dupont Hospital for Children is far and away a better ER to be in if worse comes to worse.

    ReplyDelete

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