from Hacker News

I shared my toddler's hospital bill on Twitter

by joshrotenberg on 7/8/17, 4:42 AM with 46 comments

• by quantummkv on 7/8/17, 6:11 AM

  Am i missing something in here or are the costs in that bill really this high? $22,526 for room boarding for 2 weeks? Over here in India my grandma's bypass surgery costed somewhat about $10,000. That included everything including the stent, medicines and boarding, that too at a renowned, premiere private hospital.

  Is this a special case or are healthcare costs generally this high in America?

• by hkmurakami on 7/8/17, 5:42 AM

  > It was eye-opening to see just how low our discourse has sunk, to be forced to acknowledge that what passes for debate in the age of the internet is often nothing more than spewing venom at the other side. How are we ever supposed to find a solution that’s better than either Trumpcare or Obamacare if we can’t even shut up long enough to recognize the humanity in the people on the other side of the debate?

  So people on one side of the fence are not happy about the very high medical costs required to keep a child alive. They do not understand the humanity behind the numbers.

  On the other side of the fence are parents who are not happy that some people think their child is an excessive burden on the system. They (understandably) do not understand (or at the least, are looking away from) the numbers behind making their child viable.

  The author correctly identifies one side's shortcoming wrt balanced discourse, but does not see the blindness of her own implied position -- that no cost is too high to save a life. Nowhere in this piece does she broach the subject of numbers and real cost [1].

  Finding balance is very difficult in any area, especially in areas where you only have _one shot_ (an example is your child's education, where many parents feel that no amount of investment is enough, and more is always better). But since the system does not have infinite resources, it's a necessary conversation to have (which the author could have brought up, but failed to do so -- understandably, since this article is a strategic opinion piece meant to further the author's self-interest, which I completely respect).

  A billion dollars to save a child's life, we would likely agree, is too much. $1,000, we would likely agree, is entirely justified. Where we draw the line, why, and how we get there (of urgent need is our relationship with end of life care and treatments) is an important conversation that we are failing to have, and those of us on both sides of the fence are equally culpable for this shortcoming.

  [1] The large 6 figure bill and post insurance $500 bill is only used qualitatively in the introduction.

• by mnm1 on 7/8/17, 5:31 AM

  It's depressing to me to think that people hate others so much that they would go to such great lengths to keep others from getting healthcare and ensure their demise. These same people would have no problem accepting healthcare from others if it was their lives that were in danger. I truly cannot fathom the hypocrisy, hate, and cruelty that must exist in these people's hearts towards their fellow citizens.

• by Aloha on 7/8/17, 5:32 AM

  Part of why healthcare is so expensive today, is we're capable of saving so many more lives than before. As little as a generation ago, many more would have died, people who now go on to live fruitful productive lives.

• by everdayimhustln on 7/8/17, 7:02 AM

  Bots and unthinking cyberdisinhibited people competively flame and troll whomever is the current punching-bag for brownie points, schadenfreude and negative attention seeking behavior.

• by BrandoElFollito on 7/9/17, 9:35 PM

  This is one of the reasons I love my country (France) : because I do not even have a bill to tweet. Literally : there is no obvious financial trace of serious medical items.

  Sure, when I go to the emergency with my child and his swollen ankle, I get charged 28€ (IIRC), which later get reinbursed. This is the highest medical bill I can think of (except dental and optical). A 100,000€ bill would not appear anywhere.

• by petraeus on 7/10/17, 2:54 PM

  The are children, orphans, families, whole societies that live worse than even the poorest of americans. Sickening.

• by holydude on 7/8/17, 6:24 AM

  In my country somewhere in europe you pay ridiculous taxes and you cannot opt out. The healthcare is shit, corrupt and if you want good care when they do not treat you like shit you need to go private and pay extra. Beware americans with your mentality you end up paying more ans getting less with programs like obamacare.

• by RcouF1uZ4gsC on 7/8/17, 5:47 AM

  Based on the background of the mother, she would have been able to have had insurance even without Obamacare, and would have still been able to have insurance no matter what the Republican Congress passes. In this situation, no matter what the government did, her child would still have been able to get the necessary surgery.

  In addition, Boston Children's Hospital is one of the premier hospitals in the world. Given the specialized nature of the problem and the fact that heterotaxy cases are pretty rare, even without insurance, the chances are high that the child would still have been treated and the hospital would have eaten the cost.

  Thus, pre/post/no Obamacare, the child still would have had the treatment. Thus, you cannot derive a political position from this case.