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[Tiggerlover91]

Just came home from a wonderful vacation and opened up a peice of mail from my medical insurance provider...and I'm ready to cry!! I just got my listing of what my surgery cost...I owe $7000+!!!!!!!! I CANNOT believe it! Now understand I've got other bills I'm paying too..my DH's from his knee injury $150, my doctors visits $200, and other small ones coming in.
Also believe, I'm way above and beyond my $20,000 that I'm allowed. Guess DH and I better suck it up the rest of the year. I'm afraid to have babies now, I can't imagine what that's gonna cost.

So what's the worst hospital bill you've had and how did you go about paying it?

Thanks for listening friends.

Denise

 

[scifihippie]

I'm sorry. What a shock to open that up!

The biggest out of pocket medical expenses I've had were for infertility treatment. It was upfront costs, so I knew going in what it was and had to prepay thousands. I think if it had been after the fact, I would have been angry to see the big bill.

Just keep thinking of your wonderful vacation and try not to let it get you down. You have another whole year to save for next May!

 

[OhMari]

It is so sad, medical bills are just outragious-this industry is plain rotten. You should see how our hospital bought all these old homes and made parking lots and then they tore down a wing of the hospital and made a huge entrance antrium.

Aurora's in our area are building clinics everywhere too. I am getting a clinic in my small town of 2200.

 

[hlbtimes2]

Yikes! That is more then my max out of pocket amount.

The biggest bill I've had to pay was $1200 for an ER visit for croup. My son was almost 3, and it hit bad at 3am. We spent a few hours in the ER, then had to have ambulance transport to childrens hospital. After insurance we had to pay $900 just for the ambulance. Plus $100 copay at each hospital, and a few other little amounts for various things. I made payments on it for a while, then used a home equity loan to pay it off.

The birth of my first child was expensive, but I had double insurance so I only paid $25. That covered my prenatal and delivery. It was well over $15,000 in bills.

 

[Tiggerlover91]

The birth of my first child was expensive, but I had double insurance so I only paid $25. That covered my prenatal and delivery. It was well over $15,000 in bills.

How do you get double insurance...your job and DH's as an example maybe. Wish I had that option as DH's employer can't afford to give out insurance.

 

[disneymom3]

Well, my worst one was about $18,000 for a surgery DS had. He had had several hospital stays, surgeries, etc in the first year he was born and DH had changed jobs already during the year making it so that we had already met the out of pocket max for TWO different insurance companies. We asked his specialist if he would be willing to get the surgery done before the end of the year even though it was about three months before he had planned to do it. We were just strapped. To shorten an already long story, DS ended up being in surgery for over 4 hours and in the hospital for 9 days instead of the 3 we had expected due to complications. (Not because of his age or size, just other stuff that was discovered when they went in.)

So, the co DH worked for at the time was having financial difficulties. No one knew how bad until a few months later. Turns out that for the last quarter of the year, while they were taking premiums out of employee checks, they were not actually paying Blue Cross. You know, that form you sign when you go into the hosp saying that if for any reason your insurance doesn't pay, then you will? Yeah. We were totally screwed.

Most of the accounts, we set up payments and they--like the surgeon, the other specialist who had to check on him each day for other things, the anethesiologist--were all really cooperative. The only choice the hospital gave us was to pay it in full or to set up an account with this financing co that charged 25% interest. We were getting ready to cash out all savings we had when the co that took over from the financially troubled co DH worked for said they would pay a portion of the bills for anyone who submitted them by a certain date. They paid all but $2000 of the hospital bill. That was a huge blessing.

If I were you, I would call the hosp right away. See if the bill can be reduced in any way and then set up a payment plan. Good luck. Money issues are so stressful.

 

[3princesses4us]

I know, health care is scary expensive. The worst for me was the one time I got pregnant without insurance (DH was changing jobs), I miscarried. If that wasn't bad enough, it wasn't happening naturally so I had to go in for a D&C which is surgery with general anesth. Then a few weeks later I find out it was something really abnormal called a molar pregnancy which could ultimately be fatal if not fixed and was treatable like cancer (chemo, etc.)!
I had to go in for weekly then monthly blood workup for 6 months until my HCG levels returned to normal. In the end, it ended up costing us over $2000 out of pocket to NOT have a baby. Seemed especially cruel.

 

[MUFFYCAT]

a few moths ago my DD got sick and to the ER twice.the total out-of-pocket exps totaled abput $1200.