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Bitter pill: The cost of health care in the U.S.
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Half a Million Dollar Heart
Have you been surprised by a high medical bill? Share your story and you could be featured on TIME and CNN.
- rachel8, CNN iReport producer
Our daughter Nora was born with congenital heart defects and needed open-heart surgery when she was 4 days old to repair a hypoplastic aortic arch. Her 2 week hospital stay, open-heart surgery, and countless chest x-rays, echocardiograms, blood gas tests, IVs, medications and more cost $428,903. Almost half a million dollars! A number that, as young working parents, we could not fathom.
We are fortunate enough to have insurance through my employer, so we were spared financial hardship: our out-of-pocket costs for Nora’s surgery bills were only $2,395. I can’t imagine what our life would be like if we didn’t have health insurance.
1 in 100 babies are born with congenital heart defects, making it the most common birth defect. According to the Children’s Heart Foundation, the cost for inpatient surgery to repair congenital heart defects exceeds $2.2 billion a year. For children like Nora and families like ours, this is not sustainable.
Today, Nora is a happy 5 month-old baby, and we're proud to show her “zip-line scar,” proving what a warrior she is and what she endured at such a young age.
As a parent, I’d do anything and pay anything for the health and safety of my child. If that means paying half a million dollars for her to have a healthy, beating heart, I’d do it. How? I’m grateful for my employer-sponsored health care coverage and thankful that I don’t need to have an answer.
We are fortunate enough to have insurance through my employer, so we were spared financial hardship: our out-of-pocket costs for Nora’s surgery bills were only $2,395. I can’t imagine what our life would be like if we didn’t have health insurance.
1 in 100 babies are born with congenital heart defects, making it the most common birth defect. According to the Children’s Heart Foundation, the cost for inpatient surgery to repair congenital heart defects exceeds $2.2 billion a year. For children like Nora and families like ours, this is not sustainable.
Today, Nora is a happy 5 month-old baby, and we're proud to show her “zip-line scar,” proving what a warrior she is and what she endured at such a young age.
As a parent, I’d do anything and pay anything for the health and safety of my child. If that means paying half a million dollars for her to have a healthy, beating heart, I’d do it. How? I’m grateful for my employer-sponsored health care coverage and thankful that I don’t need to have an answer.
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