20-Year-Old’s Appendicitis Adventures Costs Him $11,000 Out of Pocket — With Insurance

No doubt thousands of our readers probably have experienced or know of similar stories to this, but because this particular one has gone viral on Reddit and social media, we are going to use it as an example for our first good Obamacare rant of 2014.

Obviously, you can’t view the name and information for the subject, but a 20-year-old kid woke up with a terrible case of appendicitis.  He had to have emergency surgery.  The cost of the operation and hospital stay involved:  $55,000.  Luckily, he had insurance under his father’s health care plan.  This cut it down substantially, leaving the 20-year-old kid (who should be worrying about things like getting a date and tuition) with only a much more manageable $11,000+ bill.

Let that sink in.  He had insurance.  This is not a vagrant off the street.  This is not one of the multimillions of uninsured Americans we hear about as the mainstream media and politicians try to make us believe that Obama’s cherished Affordable Care Act is really making a difference.  This is a 20-year-old kid that had a very unexpected and serious issue through no fault of his own that is now stuck with a huge bill.  And this at a point in his life when his highest income potential is probably sacking groceries part-time or delivering pizzas.

Stories like this are very common in America, and there are several cases of people just out of their teens having to declare bankruptcy in the wake of huge medical bills.  Now, those that vehemently supported Obamacare are always talking about situations like that.  They talk about how people that don’t pay their bills drag down the system and cost everyone in the long run.  That’s one of the reasons that Obamacare is supposed to be so effective, because so many more people will have insurance.  But this is in the post-Obamacare era that this happened.  Once again, this is not an uninsured person.  This is a person with what many in America would consider a very normal, run-of-the-mill health care plan, and certainly one that would probably fall under the “bronze” category if you were at the woefully slow functioning Health Care Marketplace website.

Is Obamacare doing anything about one of health care’s biggest problems…the out-and-out gouging of sick Americans?  Nope.  Nada.  So, there will still be plenty of people waking up to bills like these all over the country even in the post-Obamacare era.  But at least they won’t owe the $55,000, right?

To use medical terminology, our supposed “health care reform” is treating the symptoms and not the disease.  Instead of delving into why an operation and short hospital stay costs half the price of a house (which most people take 30+ years to pay for), we are worried about getting more people bad coverage.  We are worried about making sure more people have a little bit of help in a totally corrupted mostly worthless system.  And we actually have let multiple political candidates run for the most powerful office in this nation (and quite possibly the world) on this platform.  Shame on us for accepting this as even a piecemeal solution.

What they have done is what they always do.  They have found a way to make more people reliant on the government for even more personal services while still keeping the well-lined pockets of lobbyists happy and open.  This is not change.  It certainly isn’t reform.  It’s more like the norm.

As this story went viral on social media, the really amazing thing about the feedback was that so many people internationally chimed in to share their stories.  In Australia, a man shared his story.  He had a very similar event…emergency appendectomy.  Cost to him out of pocket:  $0.  He never even got a bill.  He even had a check-up visit a few months later to evaluate his progress.  They have a national health care system…a real one, not the crooked sham that is Obamacare.  They do indeed pay more in taxes, but when something like this happens, they don’t have to worry about whether an emergency operation is going to cost them their car, homes, and belongings.

The story would be troubling enough, but the fact that we are being sold this lie that something is getting better or being done about it is easily the most frightening part.  And so many Americans really got behind this.  We wonder how many $11,000 bills for those that championed the Obamacare cause it will take before even the most furtive supporters have to question just what they have gotten behind?

If only he had the "Gold" package, eh?  Click the photo for a better view.
If only he had the “Gold” package, eh? Click the photo for a better view.

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