A North Carolina man was billed $80,000 for an 18-hour hospital stay last summer after being bitten by a snake – and almost all of the bill was for anti-venom.
Eric Furguson, 54, of Mooresville, was shocked when he received the massive bill from Lake Norman Regional Medical Center attributing more than $81,000 of the cost to a four-vial dose of anti-venom.
He told the Charlotte Observer he was able to find the same anti-venom online at prices ranging from $750 to 12,000 per vial, a staggering difference for which they demanded an explanation.
Mr Ferguson’s health insurance through Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina reduced the total bill from Lake Norman Regional Medical Center to just over $20,000, of which he paid a deductible of about $5,400 – but his wife worried about the cost of being uninsured.
‘What if it was someone that didn’t have the resources to research and didn’t have insurance?’ Wife Laura Ferguson wondered aloud to the paper. ‘What is fair and equitable here?
Source: The Daily Mail