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Tabonga

How much did this cost?  

24 members have voted

  1. 1. How much did this cost?

    • $100,000
      0
    • $110,000
      0
    • $120,000
    • $130,000
    • $140,000
      0
    • $150,000
    • $160,000
    • $170,000
    • $180,000
    • $190,000
    • $200,000

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I was recently in ICU for 12 days - kidney failure with an unknown cause.  So I got kidney dialysis and fortunately  my kidneys came back online.  I really remember very little of most of the stay since I was pretty much out of it

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Enough of that - I got the hospital bill today - so the game is to guess how much it was in total.  It is between $100k and $200k. The poll is divided by $10k increments so a little rounding is involved.

 

Edited by Tabonga
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I'm going to call it at 150k.  I'm rounding up a little as I know from my work insurance and non-insured in general costs for a day stay in a hospital on average what it can cost, then you pull that out by 12 days.  I could be low, but actual dialysis isn't that much compared to the rest of that mess.  I may be low, so I guess we'll see later.

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I'm going high end.

The health industry pricing is so fucked up that it could be any cost, really. They hire people called chargemasters who basically throw out ludicrous numbers and then work with insurance to get to the actual cost paid out. How can you reasonably predict costs with that structure?

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Thanks for the kind thoughts everyone!

I am currently learning to walk again - my muscles pretty much surrendered after the period of non-use. It is almost like they have forgot what they are supposed to do.

I am hobbling around with a walker (which is harder than people realize) and  have been walking short distances without it - it is going to be a long haul to get back to normal but I am making small amounts of progress each day. My upper body strength is almost back to normal.

My most excellent friend Mohamed gave me a large Sharp Raku smart tv which is at least 48" - I have to build a rack to fit in a gap I have between bookcases and then I will hook up my switch to it.

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I will leave the question up for a day or so longer and then give the answer.

Edited by Tabonga
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Administrator · Posted

I'm sorry to hear about all this but I'm glad to hear that you are out and on the mend! I'm sure it has been a tough adjustment so I wish you the best!

I'm also (hoping) that by the bill, you mean the gross amount and not your cost.  Either way it is still staggering.  Be well!

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OK - The prize winners are Tanooki, Astral Soul and ThePhleo at $150k.  The actual bill provided to Medicare and Kaiser by the hospital was $149,418.18. Plus $500 from me (assuming I don't get dry gulched by some footpads in the near future for further amounts).  So just a few bad kronor under $150k.

Edited by Tabonga
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59 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

Yeah it's obscene, but fit what I was saying unless I had forgot something and seems I hadn't.  I work an analyst roll in a QA area essentially for an insurer so with what rolls through email, etc I had a general idea. 🙂

No biggie - I just thought it would be an interesting exercise highlighting the bizarreness of our medical care system.

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I honestly thought it would have been higher, seeing as my wife spent most of a week in the hospital for incredibly bad pneumonia a bunch of years back and the bill to insurance definitely topped $200K (IIRC, it was in the neighborhood of $250-275K).  No ICU, no prolonged ER stay, just checking her in, putting her in a room, giving her IV meds and then, eventually, finally, when the stupid fucker wasn't busy, playing golf, the sole doctor that knew how to run the "lung sucker" machine (no clue what it's called, but that's basically all it does) came in, cleaned out her lungs over the course of like half an hour, and she immediately and drastically improved.  It's as if she might have started to immediately improve sooner had the asshole not called out of work (told this quietly by the nurses on the floor) to play golf she might have improved sooner.

Neither here nor there, though.  Glad you came out the other side, and that your part of it wasn't remotely what plenty of folks see these days.

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On 10/30/2021 at 3:54 AM, darkchylde28 said:

I honestly thought it would have been higher, seeing as my wife spent most of a week in the hospital for incredibly bad pneumonia a bunch of years back and the bill to insurance definitely topped $200K (IIRC, it was in the neighborhood of $250-275K).  No ICU, no prolonged ER stay, just checking her in, putting her in a room, giving her IV meds and then, eventually, finally, when the stupid fucker wasn't busy, playing golf, the sole doctor that knew how to run the "lung sucker" machine (no clue what it's called, but that's basically all it does) came in, cleaned out her lungs over the course of like half an hour, and she immediately and drastically improved.  It's as if she might have started to immediately improve sooner had the asshole not called out of work (told this quietly by the nurses on the floor) to play golf she might have improved sooner.

Neither here nor there, though.  Glad you came out the other side, and that your part of it wasn't remotely what plenty of folks see these days.

“Lung sucker” = ventilator?

Anyway, that amount of cash is damn crazy considering hardly much effort was needed by the working staff!

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2 hours ago, GPX said:

“Lung sucker” = ventilator?

Anyway, that amount of cash is damn crazy considering hardly much effort was needed by the working staff!

No, it was literally this little tool they put down your windpipe into your lungs with a tiny camera to use to operate it where they sucked the gunk out of each alveoli in each lung.  They didn't do anything more to give her oxygen than slapping the same nasal tubes on her that they pretty much everybody who walks in and ends up in a room.  Really, beyond hooking her to up AV saline, glucose, and antibiotics, they did fuck all until Dr. Asshole got over calling into work to play golf and did his damned job for 30 odd minutes.

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