On top of that I needed dialysis 3x a week for ~6 months before the transplant and that was billed out at a little of $7,000 per visit, north of $21,000 a week, for 26 weeks, over $500,000 billed for that alone.

Healthcare costs in the US are absolutely gross!

[–] LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Holy fuck. That's so much. God forbid you live and continue to function in society. It's almost like the people who control the prices just want us to die or some shit.

[–] LilB0kChoy@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

Kind of. The hospitals and clinics don’t want that, in part because a sick patient is a revenue stream and in part because I’m sure a lot of medical professionals genuinely care about their patients.

I’d say the health insurance companies are more interested in a sick patient’s death. They’d prefer healthy people paying premiums but not having a lot of claims. It increases their profits.

[–] LemmyInRedditSux@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Dang, you got a full body renovation. You don't seem that upset about the million dollar bill. Did your insurance cover it all?

[–] LilB0kChoy@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

On Oct. 20, 1972, Nixon signed H.R. 1 into law. The law automatically qualified anyone with chronic renal disease, anyone who would need a kidney transplant, for Medicare, regardless of age.

So Medicare covers transplants and post care for a period and I was eligible even at my relatively young age, early 30s.

That said, the poor life choices that I made that led to needing the transplants also left me in a pretty big financial hole before healthcare and I had a month long hospital stay long before the transplant when I first got really sick.

In the end I filed for bankruptcy to free myself from the medical debt but also to get a clean start on the life I fucked up.

Even with the existing social safety nets it’s incredibly easy to go broke with our healthcare system.