I had an accident happen on a dive trip where my dive buddy had a heart attack about 70ft down. Another diver and I see him struggling, and do an emergency surface to haul him up. We get him on the boat, Coast Guard meets up with us to rush him back to shore, and when we get back, they had an ambulance there for me as they were worried I’d get the bends from having to surface from that deep that fast.
I feel totally fine the whole time, get to the hospital and they ask me if I’m in any pain/check for symptoms. I tell them no. They have me wait on a stretcher for about half an hour, until a hyperbaric specialist can see me. He walks over (again, I’m just sitting on a stretcher in the middle of a hall this whole time), and asked if I’m feeling okay. No issues other than the worst need to pee I’ve ever had from the saline bag in me, and he says I’m good to go. Weeks later, I get a hospital bill for $7k, $5k of which was being seen by a specialist. Which, my college insurance didn’t cover because I wasn’t referred to by my PCP.
It took an insane amount of back and forth to convince them to cover it, but quickly turned around when I showed them the news broadcast from that day about the accident, and how bad it would look for them to try and throw a $7k medical bill onto a college student who was literally trying to save a dude’s life.
Our medical insurance system is just a ton of fun.
I had an accident happen on a dive trip where my dive buddy had a heart attack about 70ft down. Another diver and I see him struggling, and do an emergency surface to haul him up. We get him on the boat, Coast Guard meets up with us to rush him back to shore, and when we get back, they had an ambulance there for me as they were worried I’d get the bends from having to surface from that deep that fast.
I feel totally fine the whole time, get to the hospital and they ask me if I’m in any pain/check for symptoms. I tell them no. They have me wait on a stretcher for about half an hour, until a hyperbaric specialist can see me. He walks over (again, I’m just sitting on a stretcher in the middle of a hall this whole time), and asked if I’m feeling okay. No issues other than the worst need to pee I’ve ever had from the saline bag in me, and he says I’m good to go. Weeks later, I get a hospital bill for $7k, $5k of which was being seen by a specialist. Which, my college insurance didn’t cover because I wasn’t referred to by my PCP.
It took an insane amount of back and forth to convince them to cover it, but quickly turned around when I showed them the news broadcast from that day about the accident, and how bad it would look for them to try and throw a $7k medical bill onto a college student who was literally trying to save a dude’s life.
Our medical insurance system is just a ton of fun.