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?’
When reached by the Observer, the hospital released a statement saying it rarely charges list prices.‘We are required to give Medicare one level of discount from list price, Medicaid another, and private insurers negotiate for still others,’ said the statement.
‘If we did not start with the list prices we have, we would not end up with enough revenue to remain in operation… Our costs for providing uncompensated care are partially covered by higher bills for other patients.
‘In some cases, Lake Norman Regional’s charge is considerably higher than other local hospitals,’ the statement continued, explaining that discounts of about 62 to 65 percent are offered to patients without insurance, according to the Observer.
A lawsuit was filed in 2010 by doctors at Lake Norman and another local hospital accusing the medical facilities of offering kickbacks to doctors who could provide unnecessary treatment.
Parent company Health Management Associates denied the allegations, but declined further comment.
