we've been really fortunate as far as health insurance goes. our jobs have always been full time and included benefits and allowed us to pay in our few hundred bucks a month and they chipped in the rest for good private insurance. and we've had great jobs that for the most part haven't laid us off and even in the down times between jobs, one of us has always worked with benefits. and, of course, we've always found it important enough to pay in even when we were doing nothing but paying since we were healthy, healthy, healthy and never required any pay outs.
until now.
i was a little worried all week while in the hospital that we might have crazy high bills to deal with when we got home (since, once again, we've never actually USED our insurance so i've only always assumed it was good, but didn't really know). i actually almost stopped my dad from opening a second box of kleenex one day while i was still in the critical unit just in case they charged ($12 a pop, no doubt!!) per item.
so i got my bill from the MBH today and my total charges for 6 days in the hospital with all those specialists and all those tests (and all that kleenex!!) was some $42,000.00. (what the what??)
but guess how much i have to pay?
$47.50.
priceless.
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actually, it seems like you're right IN THE MIDDLE of it! you've witnessed firsthand how expensive something like what you had can be, and you're thankful you have great coverage. so, i'd assume, you'd feel some empathy for those that would've been saddled with the entire $42000 bill to pay off themselves. a similar thing happened to my wife, when she had surgery while under an insurance plan, but then the company she was working for ended up going bankrupt and her health policy was RETROACTIVELY cancelled. that is, she was supposedly covered while undergoing surgery and for a while after, but then the policy was retroactively cancelled on a date PRIOR to her surgery, so she was stuck with the bill, which was over $20000. after making a good faith effort to pay the hospital in small increments, the hospital ended up eating the rest of the cost. which is totally backwards. i don't want to hospital having to take on those costs, as they are the ones providing the service.
anyway, if you thought your treatment was good and hospital did fine work, and you realize how crazy big a bill you got (which was inflated due to hospitals having to cover things like retroactively cancelled insurance plans), i'd say you have some good firsthand knowledge of why there has to a better way to deal with this.
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