Posted on 10/27/2014 1:25:48 AM PDT by grundle
The nine-day treatment of Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan who died at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, Texas, Wednesday cost the hospital an estimated $500,000 and he had no insurance to cover the charges.
The New Haven Register reported that the hospital is also unlikely to collect on the bill.
According to the report, since his isolation at the hospital on Sept. 28 Duncan was in critical condition. As a part of his treatment, he was placed on a ventilator, received experimental drugs and had kidney dialysis. ADVERTISEMENT
There is also the cost of security and the disposal of Ebola-contaminated trash and equipment for caregivers.
Dan Mendelson, chief executive officer of Avalere Health, a consulting firm in Washington, told the Register the charges for indirect costs, such as the disruption of other areas of hospital care, and Duncan's bill would fall somewhere in the ballpark of $500,000.
According to Gerard Anderson, health policy professor at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health, Duncan's care is likely to have cost the hospital some $18,000 to $24,000 daily and had suggested shortly before his death that the hospital could write off the charges as charity.
Officials at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital and the Liberian embassy in Washington declined to say who would foot the Ebola victim's medical bill before he died.
Missionary workers Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol who got infected while working with Ebola patients in Liberia both survived after they were brought back to the United States for treatment.
The Register noted that both missionaries were covered under health insurance plans. Brantly's treatment was covered by health insurance provided by the charity Samaritan's Purse, while Writebol's treatment and evacuation from Liberia was covered by group health and workers' compensation insurance plans offered by North Carolina-based missionary group SIM.
Thomas Eric Duncan, 42, became the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States.
"It is with profound sadness and heartfelt disappointment that we must inform you of the death of Thomas Eric Duncan at 7:51 a.m. Mr. Duncan succumbed to an insidious disease, Ebola. He fought courageously in this battle. Our professionals, the doctors and nurses in the unit, as well as the entire Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas community, are also grieving his passing. We have offered the family our support and condolences at this difficult time," said a statement from Texas Health Resources shortly after his death Wednesday.
Perhaps Jesse Jackson is picking up this tab - maybe that’s the reason for his visit. Or not.
Why have insurance, as long as Obama’s got his stash?
Bill the family.
And no doubt if they did they would immediately be branded RACISTS!
I am surprised it wasn’t more than that. Probably they didn’t even count the loss of business from others since they had to clear out the entire ICU section.
No problem.
The feral government will just increase Obamacare rates for the middle class so they can cover all the uninsured.
Devotion only counts when you want to sue. It does not count when it is time to pay.
E.g., my doc listened to my heart. Thought he heard something, so he ordered some tests. A couple of 45-minute hospital procedures, involving only techs, not MDs, totaling about $3363. Nothing found. Lucky me.
Blue Cross hammered the bill down to $567, a reduction of 83%. I owed a $20 copay. I had insurance. Lucky me.
Blue Cross probably still overpaid.
Forbes has a report, that they emptied the entire ICU to focus on Duncan.
Not to mention the cost of cleaning his apartment, burning everything and the inconvenience to the others renters.
This part of the could easly be that much or more.
The real costs were the hospital being abandon by patents, a full cruise ship being forced to abandon a cruise. Airlines having to ground planes, disinfect them and track down hundreds of customers. Airlines in general because thousands decided not to fly.
All because one guy that wasn’t even a citizen was allowed to travel here from a country with a known deadly Ebola outbreak...
He cost us at least tens of millions of dollars and likely a lot more.
Send the bill to his embassy! His president had already publicly assumed responsibility for this guy.
I really don’t understand why billing the respective embassies in cases involving their citizens (hello Mexico!) isn’t SOP.
That was my thought. How can they possibly use equipment that was used on Duncan, like the ventilator and dialysis machine, on other patients? My guess was "millions", and that's before the effect on their bottom line of all the patients who went elsewhere because Duncan was there. I've wondered if Dallas Presbyterian will end up in bankruptcy because of this one single patient.
"According to Gerard Anderson, health policy professor at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health, Duncan's care is likely to have cost the hospital some $18,000 to $24,000 daily and had suggested shortly before his death that the hospital could write off the charges as charity."
BRILLIANT! And so then were is the money that the hospital "writes off" going to come from, Dr. Anderson? Obama's "stash"? That's maybe the dumbest statement I've ever heard from one of the world's "smartest people".
Sorry, but no. At what Blue Cross paid it's unlikely much if any profit was made, and the hospital may have lost money. For $567, you received (by your estimates) 90 minutes of technical care for your testing, and probably at least 30 minutes of physician time (your cardiologist and the doctors doing the official reading of your tests), for 2 hours, at least. So, for a cardiologist visit and the time of two trained technicians you paid ~$283.5/hr. Try getting out of an attorney's office, even if most of your time is with a paralegal, for that much per hour.
Plus that price includes the cost of staff at your docs office, staff at the hospital, the cost of equipment that was used (probably one of your tests was an echocardiogram, so consider the price of the ultrasound console; and whatever your second test was - maybe a treadmill with imaging), service contracts and maintenance for that equipment - plus the time and cost of compliance protocols to make sure they're up to standards, malpractice insurance for all physicians involved - plus insurance coverage for the hospital, facilities costs for your docs office (rental of space etc.) and facilities costs for the hospital, the cost of filing the paperwork for payment (often extensive), electronic medical record keeping - which is now government mandated, the fact that your cardiologist had to review the results and they probably called you to tell you the results, etc. etc.
Whereas I agree that the ‘real’ costs of medicine are very difficult to pin down, and hospitals ‘cost shift’ all the time, providing medical care is not cheap. There are clearly ways to do it better, but if you want expert medical care - and not just whatever Walmart or CVS can provide in some ‘minute clinic’, costs have to be covered and people with many, many years of costly training should be able to make a reasonable profit.
I paid $20 dollars (plus the expected tip) for a ‘trim’ at the barber shop the other day (going basic price in our town). This probably took 10-15minutes. The barber didn't have to worry I was going to sue him.
They know exactly what stuff costs. It’s marked up because of the insurance.
HE CAME HERE BECAUSE HE HAD NO INSUREANCE, GET IT?
In West Africa, survival in one of their Ebola facilities is around 40%.
You see where this is going, I hope. After the election, we will be sending ships and aircraft to Liberia to bring them all here.
To do otherwise wouldn't be fair.
It's a small world, after all.
You are exactly right.
King Obola is waiting for after the election for the EA or EO to start shipping these infected former slaves BACK to America where they did NOT want to be in the FIRST place.
I say FUBO and the jackwagon you rode in on....
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