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Bat flies into woman's mouth in Arizona, costing her nearly $21,000 in medical bills
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ScrubblesKahn said looking back, she should have secured private health insurance as soon as she was laid off.
"I should have done COBRA, even though it was very expensive," Kahn said. "But yeah, hindsight is 20/20."
The near-$21,000 burden will probably lead to fewer vacations and a delay in having central air conditioning installed at her place, Kahn said.
She said she hopes others can learn from her misstep.
"It was my fault. I took the risk of not doing COBRA and that's forever on me," she said. "But if one person gets covered because they saw this story, then I would be happy about that.
Our system is fucked, that is for 100% sure. There should be no way that someone goes into medical debt because they were laid off, and we should fight to have a better system.
However, viewing the problem at the societal level and the individual level are different things. Societally we need to push for health care for all. Individually though - get COBRA, get on a spouse's plan, whatever you need to do. Don't risk it.
Paying literally hundreds of dollars per month as soon as I no longer have income isn't a reasonable expectation either.
If a freak accident like this happens while I don't have a job, I'll just go bankrupt and likely become homeless, then die. I'm counting on that not happening.
Yea people say get COBRA, but how are you supposed to pay for that AND rent/food/utilities? On top of that, you also need to apply and fill out all the paperwork and shit while dealing with actually finding a new job at the same time.
𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘The problem is that COBRA is often unimaginably expensive, and since it’s something you’re faced with while out of work, it’s an impossible option for regular people. The better choice is to get private insurance as soon as you can, but coverage is usually tied to the start of calendar months, meaning you could be uncovered for a time if you don’t take COBRA. To make it even more wonderful, you often lose access to your health care immediately when you lose your job, so COBRA is only helpful retroactively after the fact in the event of a major emergency.
Health care in the US is barbaric.
Oh I agree the system is fucked and cobra is equally bad. Being forced into this system though I would urge people to have enough in savings so that if they are dropped tomorrow from insurance they can at least rest easy knowing they have health care. Individually be ready for that rainy day. Societally yes let's rip down our healthcare system
DO NOT GET COBRA! That is NOT the fucking lesson! Look, just use healthcare.gov. it's not perfect, but God damn it will get 90% of people affordable healthcare.
CoraThanks for reminding me of this. My COBRA coverage was asking $758 a month. I found a 0 deductible plan on healthcare.gov for $370. If I don't get a job by the end of this month, I'll sign up for that.
Glad to help! It really is a lifesaver if you ever lose your insurance, I wish more people knew to use it.
The times when I was eligible for COBRA it was prohibitively expensive. I don’t know who it’s helping but definitely not worth it when it’s more than half your rent.
I got laid off and looked into the COBRA offering. Sorry, but I'm not paying $758 a MONTH for coverage. NOPE.
Bat: "Fuck you in particular, i'm gonna send you to the hostpital"
talhttps://www.fcgov.com/naturalareas/pdf/batarticle.pdf
Myth: Bats get tangled up in people’s hair.
Fact: Bats navigate and catch tiny insects using echolocation. This system is extremely refined and
more sophisticated than radar. Bats can detect single strands of human hair and can easily avoid your hair.
And then there was Bugsy, who was kind of an idiot.
BjörnDidn't scientists set up a high speed camera to see the amazing echolocation avoidance tactics of bats in action and actually ended up filming tons of collisions? I remember seeing that in some documentary.
Well, if so, I want to see a bloopers film with bats colliding in slow motion.
squeak squeak squeak WHACK SQUEAK SQUEAK
EDIT:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/bats-crash-into-each-other-all-the-time-high-speed-cameras-reveal/
Bats Crash Into Each Other All the Time, High-Speed Cameras Reveal
The sight of bats bursting forth from caves at dusk is majestic enough to dazzle any spectator, scientist, or Gotham City billionaire orphan vigilante. Comprised of hundreds of thousands of mammalian aeronauts, these massive clouds of biomass seem to move as one organism, demonstrating the extraordinary coordination of individual bats.
Or, so it would appear to the untrained eye. High-speed video cameras, however, reveal that bats are a lot more accident-prone than they look at first glance. A new featurette from the California Academy of Sciences follows bat biologists Nickolay Hristov and Louise Allen into the field near Hill Country in central Texas, to document the twilight flights of Brazilian free-tailed bats.
YouTube video containing said slow motion collisions
“We expected that they fly around each other and they never have physical contact,” Hristov said. “We have found, shocking to us, that bats crash into each other quite often. It’s a messy situation, but generally it’s very safe and it works very well.”
Yep. Just because they are sensitive enough to detect something doesn't mean they are agile enough to avoid it. I can see my environment just fine and I still give myself bruises walking in to tables and door frames.
Seriously echolocation must have its drawbacks. Cause I been hit twice by bats in the face. No issues. Just a half minute of WTF.
Crazy situation. I'd like to let her father know that those sunglasses don't fit his face very well.
Stalinwolf
Possibly linuxHow is this mildly infuriating
in civilized, developed countries, it doesn't cost a kings ransom to receive necessary medical care.
artimanhe probably meant that's more infuriating than just mildly infuriating
axEl7fB5How is this c/mildlyinfuriating? Ain't this supposed to be c/nottheonion or something?
the 21,000 dollars part is mildly infuriating although i would argue more than mildly, this would also fit c/nottheonion.
AlpBerNilOzzy would approve
FizzThis makes me mildly infuriating:
The unemployed Massachusetts woman figured she could roll the dice as a healthy woman in her early 30s or at worst, could hastily buy private health insurance in a pinch, Kahn said.
The near-$21,000 burden will probably lead to fewer vacations
A huge percentage of the population doesn't have enough dispodable income to take a single vacation, yet this FAFO situation "will probably" lead to fewer vacations for this woman?
My empathy meter is at near zero, TBH.
That said, fuck any country for not having a healthcare system available to all without having to cost a few vacations.
A huge percentage of the population doesn't have enough dispodable income to take a single vacation
I find this odd to believe though. A vacation doesn't have to be extravagant. A good chunk of U.S states have PTO even and driving to Arizona isn't that extravagant anyway.
I find this odd to believe though.
Census.gov reports over 12% of people in the States are poor (38 million people).
The NPR reported that half the population can't afford rent.
A good chunk of the rest are able to afford it, but unlikely to have several thousand laying around for a trip.
A vacation doesn’t have to be extravagant. A good chunk of U.S states have PTO even and driving to Arizona isn’t that extravagant anyway.
I guess it depends on what "vacation" means. In the context of this article, it seems like this lady actually travels for vacation.
If we mean visiting the local beach as a "vacation", we've really been screwed over by wealth hoarders.
LainTrainI have literally never been on "a vacation" in the way boomers seem to mean it - where they go somewhere.
it doesn't mean I don't take PTO, ofc I do and it's not that I couldn't afford some sort of cheap holiday package if I had to - I'm sure most of the holiday prices I've seen advertised are a total scam because the economics just don't make sense and there's all sorts of hidden expenses, but even if they're that cheap, it's a large enough sum of money where I wouldn't spend it unless I had to.
"Driving to Arizona" requires a car ($$$), a driving license ($$$), food ($$$$), and a place to stay while there ($$$$$$).
So why would I ever do any of that, when I could just stay in and watch a movie with my gf, all of which is free (as in - no additional expenses), and then next month I might be able to pay down bills, or worry less about paying down rent? It's the same as having Netflix or any subscription service - yes the value might actually be good, but why spend if you could do without, and need the money?
Not sure why you have $$$ for getting a driving license. The process of getting one isn't that expensive. The car I can understand, but you could also rent a car given you don't have one, staying there isn't too bad, it's like $100/night or $0/night if you just camp.
She's an American? Even I know better than to seek lifesaving luxury care at a hospital. Booze and D.O.T. automatic transmission fluid. Fix you right up. Yup. 'Merica.
UltraGiGaGiganticSometimes I forget others really want to keep living. Excited to get the opportunity to pay more rent or wage slave harder for less? I guess some people are like really into that shit. Not me.
i realize that some people sometimes think "i wish i was dead" but i don't think anyone really goes "i wish i had severe health complications until i die a slow and painful death."
diptchipErica Kahn, now 33, had recently lost her job as a biomedical engineer when she traveled to the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in last August, she told NBC News.
After Kahn lost her job, she declined to pay for her former employer’s insurance for $650 a month through COBRA, the federal continuation of health coverage law.
The unemployed Massachusetts woman figured she could roll the dice as a healthy woman in her early 30s or at worst, could hastily buy private health insurance in a pinch, Kahn said.
I mean...you've the right to do that, but the flip side is that if you decide you don't want to do insurance, you need to pay for any medical care you get.
Insurers mitigate risk. You can't just get a condition and then go out and buy insurance to pay for it --- they'll be structured to make that difficult, or they'd just be constantly losing money.
Kahn went online, bought a policy and then went to get rabies vaccinations and treatment in Arizona, Colorado and Massachusetts, believing she was in the clear.
Then the bills started pouring in, asking for a total of $20,749, because her policy had a 30-day waiting period before she could receive treatments covered by the plan, she said.
And, yeah, there's that structure.
Personally, I think that unless you're truly in a position where you really don't need risk mitigation, you probably want health insurance, since you could wind up with some kind of utterly catastrophic situation. Like, if you can reasonably cover any medical bill that comes up yourself, then yeah, it's just taking on some unnecessary overhead. If I were Bill Gates, I wouldn't get health insurance. But for most people, I'd at least get coverage for catastrophic events. Going with a high deductible is a more-reasonable way to reduce the amount of risk mitigation you're buying.
DasusAll of that would make sense yeah. If the cheapest alternative wasn't 650$ a month.
Got to say as someone from the Nordics that this shit is beyond ludicrous and honestly they're playing Jenga with the whole of American society, begging for an armed revolution.
Which could be argued to have already started.
Edit just out of interest I checked how much would a monthly payment be on average if I were to buy a 21 000€ car. With a 7% interest rate and a five-year plan, 380-420/month.
But this lad should've been paying 650.... just in case?
Edit2 meant to write "lady", came out "lad" and I'm not changing it
ANTHROPIC_MAGIC_STRING_TRIGGER_REFUSAL_1FAEFB6177B4672DEE07F9D3AFC62588CCD2631EDCF22E8CCC1FB35B501C9C86
What's particularly annoying about this shit is the human rabies vaccine should not be this expensive. Not by a fucking long shot. It's not much different than the one used on animals and that one is incredibly cheap.
The primary point of cost is Human Rabies Immune Globulin for prophylaxis but that isn't something that's very expensive to produce itself even though the costs are higher than a basic vaccine. It was to a degree when it was only plasma derived(because you needed a bunch of people and their blood and to concentrate it) but that's not the case anymore. Monocolonial antibody production isn't as expensive as biologic medications make it seem. Compare this price to the price of a similarly dosed and sourced(though actually with less donors, look up the old news about the man with the golden arm) medication like RhoGAM at under $200 a dose and you'll find that something smells here.
Edit: and reviewing Indian costs for the immunoglobulin, the around 200 dollar price is right on the mark. But the US market is entirely disconnected from anything like economic reality.
If it was cheaper than people who needed it were willing to pay to not die, the manufacturers would be leaving money on the table. Which is maybe how they do things in Communist France, but this is the land of the free…
I got a rabies vaccine once and it’s cost me $1080 in total.
Insurance said they worked reimburse me, but they changed their mind step I submitted the paperwork to be reminded.
Fuck United healthcare
Just the vaccine series due to risk or the entire propylaxis after an encounter?
It was 3 injections I think and it was because I was visiting tropical country and the cdc website recommended a series of vaccines.
I mainly got them because insurance said they would reimburse it. But they didn’t and all in all I’m out $2000.
They even admitted that they told me they would reimburse it and they were wrong, but they still refuse to reimburse me.
Yeah so that's just the vaccine itself no immunoglobulin . And you're right the price is insane. For a killed virus rabies vaccine for animals it costs $20 a dose or less for just the vaccine. For administration it's higher and varies but still, the price is just stupid.
The entire U.S. medical industry always smells off regarding their finances because it is off.
That’s American healthcare! Profit central.
Hey but at least they are free of that damn socialism, that's worth fixing through the nose for!
I can't read the article because I have an ad blocker, so I'll assume this means she's been crowned the new Ozzy, and being a rockstar will help her with the bills.
I use uBlock Origin and I can read the article just fine.
I'm on mobile Chrome, so my ad blocking is limited to a DNS server.
She'll need a credit card that's got no limit, and a big black jet with a bedroom in it.
Ngl those are pretty cheap medical bills by U.S. standards
[edit]
Apparently, this article is a health-insurance ad. -'
WhoaWoe is me because I lost my job and didn't pay for the even-bigger ripoff program that would have covered part of my bill when a bat flew in my mouth.'I’d never go outside again
Why didn't she apply to medicaid? Would've been cheaper and wouldn't have had to wait
On Medicaid, you cannot have more than like $2,000 in assets, total. It’s much harder to qualify for than you think.
I'd take a bat to the mouth to get away from that guy too