The Perils of Financial Toxicity

The medical billing and insurance models in our country are broken. Consider these examples of how our medical billing system and insurance models are threatening whatever financial stability patients and their families might have had and putting them in financial distress.

• An air ambulance charged more than a man’s surgeon who performed a double lung transplant.

• For patients with Alzheimer’s disease, the the average stay at an assisted living facility is 28 months at an average cost of $3,500 a month.

• A urine test after back surgery triggered a $17,850 bill.

• A $540,842 bill for dialysis

In my latest podcast, I talked with a radiation oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center who has first-hand experience with financial toxicity in her own life. Listen here.

Dr. Fumiko Chino went from art director at a television production company to a caretaker during her husband’s cancer treatment when he was in graduate school studying for his PhD. She called his plan “sham insurance” because it failed to protect them from financial disaster. His treatment for neuroendocrine cancer put them in deep debt and she considered for a long time what her next step should be after his untimely death. It took a lot of courage to go back to school to study radiation oncology, but her job now offers her the opportunity to make the lives of patients with cancer better and to sound the alarm bells about how financial toxicity is harming patients’ well-being and quality of life.

Have You Gotten a High Bill?

Have you gotten a sky-high bill? You can send it to Kasier Health News. You can also join the Kaiser Health News Bill of the Month Club. In a new project with their partner National Public Radio, they are soliciting medical bills. They select one per month to find out what’s behind those numbers. Hopefully, this will lead to meaningful change.