My wife's cousin just died of a heart attack. In the end, he died for two primary reasons:
1) denial (maybe?) -- had symptoms for three days
2) abominable health plan. In any civilized country, he likely would have lived.
Here's why. He and his wife had virtually no savings. His deductible was nearly $7k, and after that, still pay 15%.
So... with some symptoms, if he went to the ER and it was nothing, he would go bankrupt. My visit 15 years ago for a kidney stone was billed at $3400, with no admission and just a couple IVs and pain meds. Chances are if I went today, the billing would be close to $10k, with no actual intervention.
So what would the billing be for a patient who presents heart symptoms at triage but actually does not have a heart condition? 20k? 40k?
If he actually had a condition, which he did, probably closer to 100k-200k for treatment, perhaps more. (Based on my daughter's 68.5k billing for a routine gall bladder surgery 8 years ago). His share would have been 25-40k, perhaps a lot more.
So basically, with possible heart symptoms, he was guaranteed of a bankruptcy and financial hardship for years if he went to the ER, regardless of whether or not it was indigestion, which is what he (fatally) thought. |
