Jackie Fortiér
After their youthful son was bitten by a rattlesnake and ended up within the pediatric intensive care unit, a San Diego couple acquired an enormous invoice. Listen to listen to why antivenom is so costly.
This spring, a San Diego toddler spent two days in a pediatric intensive care unit after a rattlesnake bit his hand in his household’s yard.
The payments that adopted had been staggering, with the lifesaving antivenom the 2-year-old wanted accounting for greater than two-thirds of the overall price — $213,000.
Why is antivenom so costly? One rationalization is the markup hospitals add to stability overhead prices and become profitable. Another rationalization is an absence of significant competitors. There are solely two rattlesnake antivenoms permitted by the Food and Drug Administration.
Stacie Dusetzina, a professor of well being coverage at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, mentioned it may be tough to kind out drug pricing as a result of a hospital invoice is commonly an instrument insurers and hospitals use to barter costs. Patients such because the Pfeffers usually get caught within the center.
“When you see the word ‘charges,’ that’s a made-up number. That isn’t connected at all, usually, to what the actual drug cost,” Dusetzina mentioned.
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