Can you imagine a half a million dollar bill just for the ride to the hospital? Sean and Rebekah Deines can after he had to be flown from Colorado to North Carolina. Sure, that’s 1,400 miles, but still……….. half a million?
They were visiting family in a remote part of Wyoming. Sean got sick, went to Urgent Care, and found that his white blood count was sky high. He ended up in a hospital in Denver where he was diagnosed with a fast growing blood cancer. They had to decide quickly where they wanted care. North Carolina was home, so they chose Duke University Medical Center. They had to get there fast so they hired out a private medical flight service. There, he was in hospital for 28 days. I don’t know what that cost, but the bill for the transportation was $489,000. $70,000 of that was for ambulance service to and from the airports. Insurance didn’t want to cover it because they didn’t think it was medically necessary. They said he was probably stable enough to get on a regular airplane for a three hour flight.
Those two words, “medically necessary”. I recently paid $200, out of pocket, for a cortisone injection treatment for back pain because insurance doesn’t think it’s medically necessary.
Like a lot of these situations, the news channels found out about it. They did some research and discovered that the ambulance fees were more than 30 times the average. Finally the couple were told by their insurance that they would not have to pay any of the charges.