EBOLA Hospital Costs Could Be Half Million Dollars! Who Will Pay?

Hansa44

Justine Case
And will everyone also get free hospitalization if no insurance?


http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpr...-could-run-as-high-as-half-a-million-dollars/

Who’s going to pay? The average cost to treat an Ebola patient could run as high as half a million dollars
by The Extinction Protocol


Ebola Hospital Bills TEP

October 2014 – HEALTH - Caring for Thomas Eric Duncan, the Dallas Ebola patient, may cost as much as $500,000, a bill that his hospital is unlikely to ever collect. Duncan is in critical condition at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, where he has been isolated since Sept. 28.

He's on a ventilator, has been given an experimental medicine and is receiving kidney dialysis, a hospital spokeswoman said Tuesday. His treatment probably includes fluids replacement, blood transfusions and drugs to maintain blood pressure.

There's also the cost of security, disposing of Ebola-contaminated trash and equipment to protect caregivers.

The bill may eventually total $500,000 including indirect costs such as the disruption to other areas of hospital care, said Dan Mendelson, chief executive officer of Avalere Health, a Washington consulting firm. Duncan's care probably costs $18,000 to $24,000 a day, said Gerard Anderson, a health policy professor at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Duncan has been in isolation in the hospital for nine days so far. “If they recognize that he has no money they will clearly just write it off as charity care,” Anderson said in a telephone interview.

Duncan came to the United States from Liberia on Sept. 20 on a tourist visa. He has no health insurance to pay for his care, said civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, who traveled to Dallas at the request of Duncan's mother.

Spokesmen for Texas Health Presbyterian and for the Liberian embassy in Washington declined to discuss who will pay for Duncan's care. “It's too early to make a decision about payment of bills; he is in critical condition,” Gabriel Williams, a Liberian Embassy spokesman, said in a phone interview. “The focus is on his health.” Duncan is the first case of Ebola diagnosed in the United States. Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha have also treated Ebola patients, three of whom have been released after recovering. A fourth patient is under care in Omaha and a fifth in Atlanta. Neither of the hospitals would comment on the cost of treating those patients. Kent Brantly, the first person to be transported from Liberia to the United States for care, was covered under health insurance provided by his charity, Samaritan's Purse, said Todd Shearer, a spokesman for the group. Two other aid workers, Nancy Writebol and Rick Sacra, went to Liberia with the Charlotte, N.C.-based missionary group SIM. They are covered by the group's health and workers' compensation insurance plans, and SIM plans to pay their $25,000 deductibles, said George Salloum, the group's vice president for finance and operations.

Writebol's evacuation from Liberia was covered in full by one of SIM's insurance carriers, Aetna Inc., he said. He's still waiting for bills from other carriers, whom he declined to name, and said he didn't know what the hospital care cost. “The hospitals have not disclosed that information to us,” Salloum said in a phone interview. “I'm very anxious to find out, personally, just wondering what they're charging for that kind of care.” Emory and Nebraska are known for their expertise in exotic diseases and careful isolation of infectious patients. Texas Health Presbyterian doesn't not have that reputation, but is ranked the fifth-best hospital in the Dallas-Fort Worth region by U.S. News and World Report. Duncan arrived there in an ambulance on Sept. 28, after being initially sent home two days earlier from the emergency room with antibiotics. Anderson, a former federal health official, said that as a foreign citizen Duncan wouldn't be eligible for any U.S. health programs such as Medicaid, for low income people. Texas hospitals charge $8,176 per day on average for treatment of viral illnesses, including exotic diseases such as West Nile virus and Dengue fever, said Andrew Fitch, a health-care pricing expert at NerdWallet, a San Francisco-based company that provides consumer finance and health data. That figure “is actually probably on the low end” for Ebola, Fitch said in a phone interview. “The isolation ward would bump up the charge a lot.” –Chicago Tribune
 

Countrymouse

Country exile in the city
Obama had better do something about incoming ebola patients or ebola is going to destroy his much-beloved "afforable healthcare system" that he considers the crown jewel of his regime....
 

Broccoli

Contributing Member
http://www.theleafchronicle.com/sto...neral-million-military-cost-liberia/16887843/

US general: $750 million military cost in Liberia
Construction of treatment facilities, more labs, testing and training will add up in Ebola response
WASHINGTON – U.S. military efforts to construct treatment facilities, set up more labs and conduct testing and training in Africa to deal with the Ebola crisis are expected to cost $750 million over six months, the Army general who commands U.S. troops in Africa said Tuesday.

Gen. David Rodriguez said the U.S. has been asked to set up four more testing labs, in addition to the three already there. He said three or four highly trained U.S. troops work in each of the labs.

The U.S. troops in the labs are testing specimens drawn by local hospitals and health care workers in order to help determine whether patients have the deadly Ebola virus. The troops do not come in contact with the actual sick patients, but handle only the samples.

50% rule observed

comment: Liberia 750 million vs US .5 million
 

Cheval

Veteran Member
No problem. He'll just ring up Janet up at the fed and tell to get to a computer and press ctrl+p fo mo money.
 

AddisonRose

On loan from Heaven
Yep, and that ole race baiter Jesse Jackson is saying that Duncan is not getting the care a white person would. Seriously? Enough of these Liberians come into this country infected, no one will afford to get any care, Jackass Jackson. And I think the monetary total of his care up to this point has been more than outstanding.


Go shakedown someone else, Jesse. We don't want you here.
 

ginnie6

Veteran Member
Jesse Jackson said "he came home to marry the mother of his child"..........Liberia is his freakin home!!! Why should we be stuck with this?
 

Melodi

Disaster Cat
Jesse Jackson said "he came home to marry the mother of his child"..........Liberia is his freakin home!!! Why should we be stuck with this?
Do you have another suggestion? In a similar case (but one with much more compassionate circumstances) a young German man was kept for months in a US hospital because of an unpaid bill after a bus crash. The Germans were furious, because the young man was quite injured and of course the bills just got higher; they were even taking collections up from Colorado State Employees (I was one at the time) to try to cover them.

Eventually the Germans negotiated a "release" for the young man and paid for a plane to carry him home to his Mom, if I recall correctly he may have died soon after but it has been many years.

However, the fallout was that German hospitals that were now treated US service personal and their families as a "Contracted Out" system of medical care (under Bush I I might ad) announced they would no longer treat Americans until full payment was made by insurance companies. When information American insurance companies didn't operate that way, basically the German's said tough! This came to a head when I was now working for the Federal Government and the wife of a serving US military member needed urgent surgery in a German hospital or she could die. The Germans demanded payment, again the American insurance companies said they didn't operate that way and refused. The German's told the US State Department find the money or else.. The American's responded with "you can't do that, she will die if you don't treat her now!" and the Germans said:

"That's right, she will die...pay up now!"

I don't even remember how it all ended, I think money was found somewhere and pressure put on the insurance companies; I know that something was sorted but the point is that most Western countries have some form of REAL public health system. Like Ireland, it may not cover everyone and for example would not have covered this guy direction if he flew in here - but, there is a system and probably he would just get care; the bill would be written off in the public system unless it looked like there was some hope of getting money out of his family. Also, the bill would be a lot lower because while we don't have a single payer system, we do have the public plus private system and they are both overseen by the government in terms of costs, charges etc.

There simply isn't any point in charging more than people can pay, or you just end up with the US system of massive numbers of people going through bankruptcy (health bills were already at 50 percent of bankruptcies when I worked a bit in bankruptcy court in 1989) which doesn't solve the problem of funding the hospitals, doctors or other costs; it just makes them eat them and they collapse.

I am not saying the "new" system in the US solves the situation either - but what should they do with Mr. Duncan? Have the taxpayers pay for a special medical flight back to Liberia and dump him at the airport to infect more people?

There are no easy answers here, but starting to restrict travel from these areas would be a good and logical place to start...
 

dstraito

TB Fanatic
Obama had better do something about incoming ebola patients or ebola is going to destroy his much-beloved "afforable healthcare system" that he considers the crown jewel of his regime....

imho, he never intended Obamacare to work. It was designed to fail so they could bring in single payer system run by .Gov and make everyone dependent on it.

That and to help bring about the Total Transformation he is hoping for that will collapse the US so it can be rebuilt in a communistic model of utopia (we all know how those work out)
 

Nowski

Let's Go Brandon!
In the early 1980's, I lived about a mile from that hospital,
and even had surgery there.

Then it was the go to hospital for most of North Dallas,
many well healed in that area used that hospital.

So, like in many cases now with the hospitals along the
open southern border, the costs will be moved onto the
backs of the paying patients.

Our country is so screwed. If ebola breaks out in Central America,
its going to be a flood into the country that even your worst nightmare
cannot begin to imagine.

Regards to all,
Nowski
 

ginnie6

Veteran Member
Do you have another suggestion?
There are no easy answers here, but starting to restrict travel from these areas would be a good and logical place to start...

No I don't have any answers. I wish I did. But it is unfair to those of us that pay taxes that this will make our costs go up even more. As a family we pay dearly for our insurance and yet we need to have a major illness before it would be of any use to us. A dear friend has just found out that her 13yo dd is going to need heart surgery due to a defect. They are on Ocare and the doctor has already told them the 3 hospitals that do this surgery may not take Ocare.....so it just sucks that we pay no matter what and yet he hopped a plane here knowing he was exposed and we are stuck with his bill.
And yes by all means restrict travel! We have absolutely NO hope of stopping this as long as those flights are happening.
 

Laurane

Canadian Loonie
when an American becomes infected and doesn't have sufficient or any insurance......who pays? Free for foreigners, got to be free for Americans too. And "free" means all taxpayers pay.
 

VesperSparrow

Goin' where the lonely go
You can bet (your last dollar, haha) that Duncan's family will sue the crap of the hospital that sent him home. And they will win. His family over the course of this has been trying to get their stories straight evidenced by the ever-changing stories and events leading up to Duncan finally being admitted and right up to what the niece or daughter or whatever she is today said she told EMS when they carried him out the door vomiting or not vomiting. And the NAACPiss will be behind them every step of the way till they all get a nice settlement. Its called the "ghetto-Lottery" and blacks are excellent at winning them.

And hopefully, Americans will stop being so damned NICE to scum like this and finally open their MOUTHS and counter-sue this family if one of THIERS becomes infected as a direct result of Mr. Kill-everybody Duncan's SELFISHNESS.
 

Melodi

Disaster Cat
Bill the Liberian government.

In all seriousness, this will probably be tried but getting money out of them is highly unlikely; especially given that at this point there really is almost not real government there.

In terms of third world folks dropping in and getting sick, the only real solution for the US or the EU is restricting travel because most people except the very wealthy will be blood and turnips in terms of getting money out of them.

On the other hand, Americas crazy health service (both before and the current one) are so nuts that most Western/modern countries refuse to have the "reciprecal agreements" that most other Western countries have with each other. We have to buy special insurance for travel to the US, and a lot of Europeans don't even realize this and of course the young often don't bother; the US could do what some nations do and REQUIRE a policy in place before travel; in fact that might be just the thing to help deal with the African/Third world problem as well.

In the long run, the US Taxpayers end up eating a lot of bills even for Europeans because of this; people become seriously ill or are injured and discover their usual "overseas" insurance that most nations have, does not include the United States or only pays a fraction of the demanded bill. While sometimes you have people "held hostage" (happened to a women from Ireland too who was in a car wreck a few years ago) usually the hospital/authorities give up (often with pressure from the State department) when/if it become obvious the person can never pay the extra or the original bill. In the case of the Irish lady, she had overseas insurance, for America but it didn't pay the insane rates per day in the hospital that they were demanding. Eventually she was allowed to return to Ireland as it was becoming an international incident and the hospital was forced to accept what the Irish insurance company was willing to pay; now as I said, we have to buy special policies that only cover the US if we travel there.

Yep, actually requiring proof of health insurance before setting foot on to a US bound plane, at least from affected countries (or the third world) would be a big start; of course it would also add to the "policing" airlines have to do but at the moment it could be considered a National Security issue.

The US could also work on actually getting real medical treaties going with first world countries so US citizens in emergencies are treated over there with their citizens treated over here; or at least made stable enough to be flown home, which is how it works in most civilized places.
 

Dobbin

Faithful Steed
I think his estate should pay. He's dead now isn't he?

I'm sure the hospital will find something to do with the $8.38 that his estate is worth.

Dobbin
 
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