Other snakebite victims have reported getting hospital bills exceeding $240,000. The family of a 9-year-old girl bit by a snake at summer camp got their insurance provider to cover a $142,938 hospital bill.
The average cost for a hospital bill to treat a rattlesnake bite is over $100,000, according to Geoffrey Smelski, the education director of the Arizona Poison & Drug Information Center.
“All of this takes several months to produce a single batch of antivenom, that will only be used in a handful of people,” Smelski said.
The expenses and complexities attached to producing antivenom led to some manufacturers dramatically reducing the amount they produced by the end of the 20th century, according to a 2015 article published in the International Journal of Health Policy.
I suspect liability risk stopped a lot of it in the US.
I have read stories of young men in Arizona who put themselves through college and made a nice part-time living by going into the desert on the weekends and catching rattlesnakes to deliver to the labs that made the antivenin.