Michael Flor, 70, miraculously survived a two-month hospitalization for COVID-19, but when he received the bill for his hospital stay, it nearly gave him a heart attack.
"I opened it and said 'holy shit!' " Flor told The Seattle Times. "I had to look at it a number of times… to see if I was seeing it right," said Flor. He spent 62 days in an intensive care unit which included an induced coma. At one point his situation was so dire a nurse put a phone to his ear so his family could tell him goodbye.
"He was as sick as you can get, with basically every organ system shutting down," said Dr. Anne Lipke, a pulmonary and critical-care specialist at Swedish Medical Center in Washington, according to The Seattle Times.
Flor's 181-page bill had nearly 3,000 itemized charges. His room averaged about $9,700 a day and his ventilator about $2,835 per day. Drug costs account for about a quarter of the entire bill.
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The total cost for Flor's illness will be even greater than his current charges. The current bill doesn't include his time in a skilled nursing facility, dialysis and the individual doctors who treated him.
According to America's Health Insurance Plans, the average cost to treat someone with COVID-19 is around $30,000.
The good news is that Flor won't have to foot much of the bill, if any of it. He's insured by Medicare and Medicare Advantage through Kaiser Permanente. The insurance company says it will waive most out-of-pocket costs for COVID-19 patients in 2020.
The federal government also has put plans in place to help pay for the medical costs associated with the crisis. The Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act require that "private health issuers and employer group health plans cover COVID-19 testing and services furnished during the pandemic, with no out-of-pocket expense."
Congress also pledged more than $100 billion to help insurance companies and healthcare providers defray the costs of the pandemic.
Flor's incredibly massive bill is another example of the high costs of healthcare in the United States. Even though the money won't necessarily come out of his pocket, the cost will be paid for by U.S. taxpayers and insurance companies — which are eventually shared by everyone.
Americans pay almost four times as much for pharmaceutical drugs and double the administrative costs of citizens in comparable developed countries. Health care providers in the U.S. also charge significantly more for their services.
If the country enacted laws that would help cut down the cost of healthcare, it would drastically decrease the price we pay for private insurance and as well as social health programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
Flor is happy to be alive, but the tremendous costs incurred by his hospitalization have put a damper on the joy he should feel after his recovery.
"I feel guilty about surviving... Why did I deserve all this? Looking at the incredible cost of it all definitely adds to that survivor's guilt," he said.
"It was a million bucks to save my life, and of course I'd say that's money well-spent," he told The Times. "But I also know I might be the only one saying that."
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An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
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Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.