Thursday, July 12, 2012

The Big Bill

We received Holland's hospital bill in the mail.  I started laughing when I opened it.  Here it is - the itemized list of everything from Primary Children's - keep in mind that these pages are front AND back!
Crazy!  Here's just one page of it...
That's just one page of the "pharmacy" charges....she was on so many drugs, there's actually 5 pages of charges from the pharmacy!  Agh!  It's insane what her poor little body went through in 1 week.  Plus there's like 3 pages from the laboratory....and a total of 9 pages that include the room fees, operating room fees, supplies, etc.  

The whole thing still seems so surreal.  And although Holland was not happy about it at the time, we did have Cosmo the Cougar come visit her just before we left the hospital.  She was pretty grumpy when he was there, but when she looks back on the pictures now, she's happy that he visited her.  Please keep in mind I'm 34 weeks pregnant in this picture...
So I haven't officially totaled it all up, but not including the 1st MRI, the charges that the hospital billed the insurance was almost $70,000.  Insane.  But for 2 brain surgeries, 3 MRIs, a CT scan, 8 days in the hospital, a TON of drugs - it almost sounds surprisingly affordable.  We did do the math and calculated that the anesthesia during the operation was $3.75/minute and the cost of just being in the operating room is $30.75/minute.  This whole thing has been a shock for me because I've never even broken a bone!  

Luckily we do have health insurance, so we won't be paying the full $70,000 (thankfully our out-of-pocket maximum is lower than that).  However, we weren't planning on the extra few thousand dollars we would have to pay to meet that out-of-pocket max (we had already planned on a couple thousand because of the baby).  Additionally, Holland will meet that maximum every year (which our insurance year follows the school year so it ends August 31st) because she will need follow-up MRIs for the next 5+ years (the first couple of years it will be every 6 months and then we'll be able to just do every year for a couple years after that).  

We had a friend who helped set up a donation fund to help cover Holland's medical costs.  If you'd like to donate, you can do so at any Wells Fargo - just ask for the HOLLAND YOUNG MEDICAL FUND.

She has her next MRI scheduled for August 2nd.  We will find out then if the remaining piece of tumor has gotten any bigger or if it has (hopefully) gone away.  Prayers on that day would be much appreciate :) 

And hopefully any day now we'll be welcoming baby brother to the family!  What a roller coaster this year has been!


UPDATE: We received another insurance statement - 2 bills from the actual surgeon who did the surgery for about $18,000, so that brings the total closer to $90,000.  Crazy!

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