After a 34-year-old woman suffered a stroke in Kansas, doctors there arranged for her to be transferred to a Boston hospital, via an Angel MedFlight Learjet. The woman and her father believed the cost of the medical flight would be covered by her private insurance. Then they got the bill.
Ski buff Sarah Witter will get $6,358.26 back from her hospital and insurer after a careful review of her bill following the KHN-NPR story on her case.
A crowdsourced investigation in which we dissect, investigate and explain medical bills you send us.
She took a bad fall on the slopes and her surgeon used a metal plate to put the splintered bones of her leg back together. When that device failed less than four months later, she and her insurer had to pay full price for the replacement plate.
Shereese Hickson’s doctor wanted her to try the infusion drug Ocrevus for her multiple sclerosis. Even though Hickson is trained as a medical billing coder, she was shocked to see two doses of the drug priced at $123,019, with her share set at $3,620.
A California college professor never imagined that trying to figure out what was causing her rash could add up to such a huge bill.
Medevac helicopter companies are on the radar of an FAA funding bill likely to pass the House and Senate this week.
After an accident in an all-terrain vehicle crushed a doctor’s left arm, he was whisked by air ambulance to the closest trauma center for specialized care. Soon he was fighting over the $56,603 bill.
“I don’t feel any consumer should have to go through this,” says Drew Calver, who faced a life-changing surprise bill from an Austin hospital after a heart attack last year. After attention as a “Bill of the Month” patient, he paid the hospital $332. But he worries about other patients with surprise bills.
A Texas teacher, 44, faces a “balance bill” of almost twice his annual salary for a heart attack he never expected to have.
