Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us – TIME
It all started with a single bead of sweat, which gave way to nausea, and then there was the fiery, unrelenting diarrhea. I still remember fondly recalling a clear nasal passageway, but by now I was especially reminiscing with the utmost nostalgia about the days I had if only one well-functioning orifice, just one that didn’t have some blood-instilled, putrid liquid coming out of it, hunching me over a garbage can or toilet. Mind you this had taken place gradually. It was around the moment I woke up face-down on my kitchen floor in a pool of something I didn’t care much to identify, with a fever-induced Osama bin Laden telling me I didn’t look so hot, that I decided to reach over for the phone and call 9-1-1. I was promptly ushered to the nearest hospital and thus began:
THE DAY I TESTED THE MEDICAL CARE MARKET
I rose hours later in a hospital bed, in a room which featured little else than a potpourri on my bedside table, and a picture of a potpourri on the wall. An old TV was playing some kind of daytime TV show where they talk about problems only people who have the time to attend any such show to talk about their problems might possibly have. I was greeted by a semi-attractive, cheerful to the point of being condescending nurse, who stood at a healthy distance away from me, most likely due to the fact that I had not changed in a while, and by now my clothes probably reeked of vomit or fecal matter or both. The day’s event suddenly accelerated as she explained that, upon rummaging through my wallet in order to confirm my identity, they had stumbled upon my health insurance card, and, apologetically, informed me that, quite unfortunately, that particular insurance did not figure on the list of private health insurances that they accepted, and that I now owed the hospital $4300, that’s $932.87 for the ambulance ride that got me off my kitchen floor and to the hospital, $2099.13 for an inpatient stay, and $968 for a cocktail of blood tests, meds and a CT scan. My lavish lifestyle as a professional pancake flipper at IHOP unfortunately precluded me from eligibility for Medicaid, and my youthfulness did not comply with Medicare. As the news of this sizable bill started sinking in, my mind drifted to the unreasonably expensive nature of my irrepressible poker addiction as well as the college loans I had long since, stopped, thinking about actually. This certainly was not good news. The second-story jump of my timely hospital getaway certainly would seem like a rash decision in hindsight, but the anti-inflammatory meds I had just not paid for most likely cushioned the blow as even I was surprised at my renewed energy and subsequent Usain Bolt impression as I made my escape.
I must have blacked out again, because the next thing I knew I was at the wheel of my 2001 Chrysler Sebring rolling to St. Andrew’s Hospital on the other side of town. One may think after my daring/insane escape out of a second-floor window that I had lost all grasp on reality by this point, but I was well aware the clock was ticking. The amount of pus excreting from the sizable warts which had grown to adult size on my perineum was sending that message loud and clear. Something was really wrong with me. I just had to find affordable healthcare somewhere in this town before it was too late. I was most likely hemorrhaging somewhere in my brain by then because what usually is Robert F. Kennedy boulevard suddenly turned into Robert F. Kennedy boulevards, as 2 sister streets plainly materialized before my very eyes. I decided to pick the one in the middle and can only assume I made the correct choice as I finally arrived at a hospital for the second time today. It was not before I had already waited a couple hours in the “reception area” that a doctor informed me that the kind of ‘discount insurance’ I had (for which I paid a premium of $470 a month) would only reimburse about %50 of this hospital’s bills, that my health insurance, Argent, only applied full rate reimbursement in the states of Texas, Missouri and Washington, the combination of which was somewhat baffling. I informed the good doctor of my decision to thank him, but not thank him, and to shop for better prices elsewhere and his face contorted into an expression of horror in response.
‘But sir, your ears are bleeding…’ said the good doctor.
‘Then, I must be quick,’ said I, with an uncharacteristic determination in my voice, probably once again a result of the folly that was gaining on me.
The hospital was legally obligated to keep me from leaving in my current state and thus compelled to charge me obscene amounts of money in the process, and so it was that I was a fugitive of not one but two hospitals that day. I high-tailed it across state lines in direction of the wonderful state of Texas. My quest for the Holy Grail of affordable health care would continue in the Lone Star State, or it would end there.
to be continued in HULK SMASH (part 2 of 2)
Le Razor's Edge 