Exactly one month ago, my wife Bradie suffered a miscarriage after 22 weeks of pregnancy. He was going to be our first child, our son, and he already had a name- mine (it's a tradition in my family, I'm the 4th of my name).
We don't know why or how it happened, but it did, and was the most devastating thing that ever happened to us. Then, a week later, she developed a life-threatening complication, an infection, and had to return to the hospital for a surgical procedure.
Despite this awful tragedy, the last few weeks have reminded us how much we love and cherish each other, and as we mourn and recover together I am moved to consider myself lucky despite everything that I'm married to such a wonderful woman.
That's all I'm going to say about that. I dearly love this community, but I'm not going to use this space to share my personal pain.
Instead, our story is simply background for the point I'd like to make. I thought I'd share with you something a little more apropos to the site: we just received our bill from the hospital.
It is truly a shining example of the outrageous state of our health care system. After the flip, I'll share with you some of the most egregious (and bleakly hilarious) points:
100 mL Ampicillin (an IV antibiotic): $625- the price of one dose. I work in a bacteriology research lab, and this is approximately 200 times the market price for the ampicillin we use. She had 14 doses. The pharmacy alone charged us $11k.
every bag of IV fluid: $147. The IV fluid is a plastic bag filled with slightly salty water. We had more than twenty of these.
4 complete blood counts (CBCs): $281, though they only drew her blood once. We were actually charged for six, then two were credited back. Yet they only drew her blood once! Why would you repeat the same test on the same blood unless you were screwing the tests up, and if that was the case how can they charge us for all of them? (seriously, can someone explain this to me?)
the first 30 minutes of her time in the post-surgical recovery room: $1372.
the next 15 minutes in the recovery room: $278. What a discount for an extra 15 minutes! I almost feel like we got a bargain on this one. Bear in mind, she had no say or control over when she left the recovery room, since she was unconscious. I feel like I should count myself lucky that she wasn't in there for a full hour, as her doctor implied she would be.
One night's stay in a hospital room: $2100
we were there for three total, and so far as I can tell, that $2100 only covered the bed, the sheets, and the television. And the delicious meals, of which she ate two.
They even charged us $5 for the little plastic cup to put her piercings in before surgery. She didn't keep the cup.
Total cost for a miscarriage and the ensuing complications, including two ER visits, 3 days in the hospital, and a surgery about as major as a tonsillectomy: $42,222
The actual bills have started trickling in; it turns out that basically every part of the hospital, from the ER staff to the radiologist to even the nurses and the hospital lab, is a separate private corporation with their own billing departments. This seems awfully inefficient to me, but what do I know?
Finally, just as a kicker, they sent us the bill for the ultrasound we got of the baby about a week before we lost him. They sent it in the same envelope as the other statement. Wasn't that efficient of them? If I wasn't such a nice guy, I would probably be blinded by rage.
Luckily, we are some of the privileged few who can afford some health insurance, or rather, we can afford it for her. I have to go uninsured, or we couldn't afford it at all.
In the three years since I left the military, her insurance alone has set us back around $20k, pretty much single-handedly wiping out our nest egg from my Navy days. The joke's on them, though, since the insurance company's portion of the hospital bill vastly exceeds all the money we've paid them in premiums so far, making us another family that is unprofitable to insure.
Though I guess all this is apparently my own fault, since I didn't shop around for a cheaper hospital at 2 a.m. while my wife was having a miscarriage, or the second time when she developed a 104 degree fever in 30 minutes. I should have taken some time and researched all our area hospitals, to find which one would be cheapest. Isn't that what the free market is all about?
Anyway, thank you, DKos. I am not a regular diarist, but I appreciate whoever took the time to read this.