Just got my bill for my stay in the hospital (all three hours of it) and it’s a bit over $3100. That included rental of the space, all the various drugs I got while I was there, rental of the recovery room (and hour of time for $300 — and the would’ve kept me longer if I wasn’t like “I’m fine, get me the hell out of here.”), etc… . That didn’t include the anesthesiologist (which I’m still waiting on a bill for) or the surgeon (which I don’t have to pay for). I still have to pay off my MRI (about $1000), and I know the anesthesiologist won’t be cheap (probably a $1000). So I still have $5000 of medical bills or so (could be worse — if I had to pay for the surgeon and post-surgery care at the specialist’s office, it’d be over $10,000).
Donations still being accepted 🙂. Hopefully I’ll get back some money in taxes this year (and I should), so that’ll kill off about 25% of it (crossing fingers as I got a good refund last year), and I’m playing the “transfer balances between zero interest credit cards” game to avoid paying interest on it so I won’t be paying double in the long run.
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Don’t mean to one-up you, but my bill @ Glendale Adventist hospital (in L.A.) for 3 days was $74,000. Pretty serious stuff, but I was with an actual doctor for no more than 2 hours. Oh, and the doctor’s nurse told me not to bother to come back for anything until the bill was paid.
So that’s why I left America last summer. Living in Genoa, Italy, slowly learning the language. As long as you have a relationship with a doctor here hospitalization is covered by “the social contract” — it’s free. My doctor (a sweet, intelligent man) charges 100 euros a visit no matter how many tests are done and, on my two visits, spent a serious amount of time with me. Plus pills are even less expensive than in Canada.
It’s fucked, man. But I don’t imagine I’ll ever return.
Ugh…I’m moving to Italy — if I can convince the wife and kids to come 🙂
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