But he says his heart almost failed a second time when he got the bill from his health care odyssey the other day.
“I opened it and said ‘holy [bleep]!’“ Flor says.
The total tab for his bout with the coronavirus: $1.1 million. $1,122,501.04, to be exact. All in one bill that’s more like a book because it runs to 181 pages.
In all the nearly 200-page bill included 3,000 separate itemized charges, at a rate of about 50 per day, in what is likely a record for Seattle hospital system, Swedish.
It gives a sense of what many thousands of other medium to long-term infected patients may be facing upon discharge, at a moment confirmed COVID-19 cases has surpassed two million in the US, and as hospitalizations once again surge in some states.
The example of Flor also underscores the outrageous, often contradictory and unnecessarily complicated, as well as opaque system of medical billing in America. Thankfully for him though, most of the massive bill is actually covered via insurance, including Medicare, but doesn't mean that much of the whopping cost won't be passed on to someone.
"Flor said he’s hyper-aware that somebody is paying his million-dollar bill — taxpayers, other insurance customers and so on," Seattle Times notes.
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Originally Posted by John-G
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