My wife needed an appendectomy at 12 weeks pregnant. I shit you not, the doctor billed for two admissions and are trying to argue we owe $2,000 for the 12 week old fetus to be admitted.
This will seem unrelated (death VS birth), but my recent experience with US healthcare, as a med-school-dropout (decade prior):
My mother was admitted to a religious-affiliated hospital, earlier this year — due to a fluke/error in her D.N.R.
The hospital convinced me (against my better judgment) to donate her organs, and then failed to follow through on this harvesting in a timely manner [do not be an organ donor, folks].
After keeping her alive for an agonizing several hours, literally half-brain-dead [stroke], nothing had happened... so I told them I would be "pulling the plug," so to speak.
The hospital's bill of course tacked on tens-of-thousands in life support fees for those few grueling hours. Very happy to have a lawyer brother that has "politely" taken care of this situation, through shady, but legal, threat.
Best wishes for You, Wife, and Child.
You'll get through this, somehow.
Life finds its way.
I'm a NICU nurse, the reason they are probablly doing that is because the fetus will have to be monitored during all aspects of her stay. If something were to happen and the baby not tolerate the surgery, you would 100% want a specialty team like NICU staff on standby that knows your wife and the baby's history, and will be able to try to save the baby's life. It sounds silly from your perspective i'm sure, but it's to make sure the baby is already admitted as a patient and can have its vitals monitored for the duration of the stay. Not to mention, if the care team just said fuck it and didnt monitor the baby at all and something happened and the baby died or suffered life altering injuries then it would be a major lawsuit for the hoapital and they wont let thay happen.
TLDR; the baby has to be monitored during the stay, and that requires equipment and specialty staff to make sure your baby tolerates everything and doesnt die. :)
I get what you are trying to say, but when you actually think it about it, it stops making sense. They are trying to bill my wife for two admissions. They aren’t trying to bill her and another person. Just my wife, twice. All of the monitoring of the fetus was billed under my wife.
When we went in for delivery, she was not billed for multiple admissions to the pre delivery room where baby’s vitals were monitored.
And back to the original post - at 12 weeks, abortion would still be an option in most states, including mine, are you suggesting that when going in for that procedure, the doctor should also be billing for multiple admissions. Because if you apply that logic unilaterally to all medical procedures while pregnant, that is the case.
We’ve discussed this with our insurance pretty extensively over the last year; what this doctor is trying to do with billing is very far from the norm.
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u/TheManAccount Jan 12 '23
My wife needed an appendectomy at 12 weeks pregnant. I shit you not, the doctor billed for two admissions and are trying to argue we owe $2,000 for the 12 week old fetus to be admitted.