DamienF in hospital

He might have insurance - I thought it was mentioned that he was self-employed at the moment? Even if he does, he will have hit his OOP max for this year already and will hit his OOP for next year rather quickly. OOPs often do not include prescription deductibles and they also do not pay for everything even once you have hit them. If the doctors are correct he will be undergoing extensive speech therapy to learn how to process spoken language again. Who knows if he will need to undergo any sort of physical therapy? Either one of those could prevent him from working indefinitely. If he was surviving on COBRA benefits and they run out while he is completing therapy, what then? Further, both short and long term disability can be difficult to get approved, if he can get them, and even then get them at a level that will allow him to support himself while undergoing therapy. Events such as this can lead to cascade failure in people's lives.

Damien is so very lucky that he has so many caring people in his lives; it is nothing short of amazing that the fundraiser that his friend setup has generated so much interest and with it so much money. It seems as if it could be a hard road to recovery, but the support system he has in place should make the emotional impact that much easier to deal with. That is, I am sure, part of what drove his kickball friends to start the fundraiser.

I realize that this is probably unanswerable, but what could Damien be looking at here? I have no idea what the costs of the american health system is like, other than the fact that it is one of the most expensive in the world.

Hospitalization is thousands of dollars per day just to lay in bed, basically; add surgeries and physical therapy, and the pre-insurance cost will be WAY north of $100,000.

(for comparison, my wife had a surgical procedure done a few years back that took three surgeons several hours, after which she was in the hospital for about a week's recovery; all told, the bill was around $45,000; insurance paid for most of it, although we wound up getting stuck with around $5000 that they refused to bay beyond our basic deductibles of around $2k -- so, that was a total of $7k. Damien is clearly gonna have way more than that overall)

Eek. My wife was in hospital for 8 days in HK - put her in private room, no expense spared stuff, it was 11,000 USD. A shared ward would have been much, much less (the hospitals subsidise the shared wards). Insurance paid everything. Plus the food was awesome (she couldn't eat much of the time, so I ate it instead while doing the bedside vigil thing)

Obviously it's different from case to case and the ultimate cost is almost always lower than the cost billed, but I saw this linked (originally from reddit) the other day from a guy who spent 4 days in hospital after a motorcycle crash:


Long story short, I really hope he has insurance.

That's even worse than I imagined. I really, really hope that Damien is insured, and properly insured at that.

(for comparison, in Norway healthcare is for all intents and purposes free. It's not perfect, there are waiting lists for many procedures, but compared to those numbers.....And you can always go to a private clinic if you have the cash)

It's the question of insurance that makes all the difference. My son was in the hospital for a week earlier this year and the bill was $25,000 even though there was no surgery. But I have good insurance and the cost to me was zero. Zero for the ER, zero for the hospital, zero for everything. So hopefully he has good insurance.

Hopefully he had COBRA coverage or ponied up for individual plan. But he was self (un?) employed at the time. He had actually had a job interview that day apparently.

The only plus side is that if he doesn't do anything stupid and put his medical bill on a credit card, he can make small payments on the debt without ever having to worry about it effecting his credit rating. He can also see if the charitible wing of the hospital has any programs to forgive or reduce a portion of the bill.

I had to have emergency surgery without insurance back in '07, and because I wasn't making much money at the time I qualified to have almost my entire hospital bill paid for by their foundation. I still had to pay $2000 to the surgeon, but the surgeon let me do $50 a month until I paid it off.

When I had my kidney stone before I had insurance, I got some really great payment plans from the hospital, and then eventually got a deal to pay half of what remained (a thousand) to knock out the other half. Jumped all over that.

I dislocated my arm last year, requiring an ambulance ride to the ER (which is about 1 mile away, but no way I could get myself there), re-setting of the arm, and pain killers, and it was well over $3000 before insurance (which, fortunately, I have). Then probably $2k in Physical Therapy. I got a fancy-schmancy immobilizing sling at the ER. When I went to my regular hospital for follow up they looked at it and said, wow, that's nicer than what we have, you might as well keep it. I'm afraid to ask how much that would cost at non-insured rates.

After my wife's emergency surgery, the insurance declined everything, but then negotiated better rates. Her insurance is supposed to cover 70%, which they sorta did since we ended up only paying about 30% of the original bill. It wasn't until later we learned the difference between actually covering 70% of a cost vs declining and negotiating. The insurance company used the declination to completely decline coverage of things they considered related. Since her surgery was an ectopic pregnancy with the removal of a Fallopian tube, the insurance company now uses that to decline any and all coverage related to my wife's lady parts and all issues of fertility. To make things worse, it's the insurance provided by her job, and we can't afford to get insurance on our own (the best quotes we've gotten are at minimum $800 a month for terrible coverage).

And people think the system is fine and we don't need to fix it.

Oh... got my Christmas bonus, used most of it to keep paying our own medical bills, but tossed a few bucks Damien's way. I hope he doesn't need it, but if he does I wanted to help out in the little way I could.

I spent 4 months in the hospital when I was 19. I still lived in Ontario and my dad had incredible subsidiary insurance (he was a firefighter) so 4 months in 4 different hospitals, 5 surgeries in that time and two after totaling 36 hours, and 2 years of physio and occupational therapy cost me nothing. Between the insurance company and my lawyer sending me all the paperwork I did see how much things were billed for though. My 4 months in hospital and everything I needed in that time were more than $3 million. All my therapy was close to $500,000. Quality healthcare is monumentally expensive.

Damien is lucky because of the incredible support everyone has shown him. The best care in the world can only help you so much, you recover after a traumatic event with the strength, love, and support of your friends and family.

oh my god, those numbers are making me scream

I don't have much, especially with work taking my money for union fees. But if I have anything I can cut from my own earnings, I'll toss it right in.
I WILL KEEP TOSSING IN FUNDS UNTIL THAT NUMBER SEEMS A LITTLE LESS HORRIFYING.

Can someone explain to me why people are oppose to universal health care in the US?

They're fucking stupid.

WELFARE QUEENS!

Or something like that. Also BLACK PEOPLE.

Don't forget ABORTION FACTORIES and WAR ON RELIGION

Also, EUROPE, SOCIALISM

Doctor's, Insurance Companies, Pharma companies, and hospitals all make out like bandits under the current system. Like everything else in the US, just follow the money.

The guys making tons of money off the current setup are very good at spending their money to influence politicians, reframe the issue in their favor, obscure just how much it would benefit everyone except the very rich, and somehow bury the fact that the US already has socialized healthcare that is very popular -- only it's just for politicians, veterans, and old people.

It's quite a feat really, considering how pretty much everyone loaths insurance companies.

There are many valid reasons for opposition, but this is not and should not be a political thread.

I hate to poke, but no news, Anders?

Not anything substantial, unfortunately. The latest was a short note from his parents:

So it seems he's still in a coma. Hopefully they will give a more comprehensive update soon.

Thanks. Really hope things improve.

I'll donate as soon as I can... No one deserves to have that done to them :( Hope he gets a good recovery and no severe permanent damage

Still no more evidence about what actually happened either, I take it?

Since it has become a bit of a news story, I hope the assholes are scared every single moment. Asking that they feel guilty too might be too much, but I do hope so....

Aww man. A thread started by Damien got bumped to the top of the page. =(

Poor guy.

A more informative update:

I chipped in. Like many I can't claim to know Damien that well, if at all, but if here and the other place do one thing pretty well it's come together as a community and he's always come across to me as "one of the good guys".

I know it's perhaps of small consolation but I hope that both Damien and his family are aware of the thoughts and prayers that come from this little part of the internet as well.

Because a lot of the public is still duped by the government/medical carrier's claims that medical bills have to be that high, that it really does cost $3400 for one night's stay in a hospital bed where all they are doing is observing you. Think about what $3400 would buy you at a luxury hotel.

If you think I am being cynical, consider this:

Bacitracin Ointment in hospital: $123.16
Bacitracin Ointment from CVS: $5.99

Silver Sulfadiazine Cream in hospital: $247.33
Silver Sulfadiazine Cream from outside pharmacy: $27.00

And the reason they have to do this is the insurance industry. Individual hospitals/carriers/groups negotiate a % rate that the insurance company will pay for a given service. So for example, the insurance company is only going to pay 10% of the billed rate. This is done for each insurance carrier who all have different negotiated discounts. However, the hospital has to charge EVERYONE the same rate for that service. They are forced to charge based on their worst negotiated contract such that they still earn a profit. This leads to our crazy situation our health system is in.

tldr: Fuck insurance companies.

Holy crap! I go offline for a few weeks and this happens. Here's hoping he'll make a full recovery. And those who did this to him get run over by a bus.

The justification that I often hear is that this is because the quality of our health care is that much better, and that's what we are paying for. That people in nations with nationalized health care don't really like the care that they get, and would prefer to pay for US-quality health care, if they had the choice. Of course, there is no data to support the claim that we have a generally higher level of care in this country, and plenty of data that suggests the opposite. And I suspect that the "foreigner who wants US-style health care" ranks right up there with the "welfare queen" on the list of "Most Persistent Mythical Creatures."

Those foreigners exist. In the form of Saudi nobles, Russian oligarchs, and the like. Not exactly the people I'd want to tailor a national health care program around however.

Oh, they exist alright. We have an entire lolbertarian party based on paying less in tax and copying US healthcare.

Basically morons.

Does this really need to turn into a political thread? We have two entire subforms for such discussion, this really isn't the place for it.

Gotta agree with Brett here; keep this thread about Damien.