A 70-year-old man was hospitalized with COVID-19 for 62 days. Then he received a $1.1 million hospital bill, including over $80,000 for using a ventilator.
A man in Washington state who spent more than two months in the hospital and more than a month in the Intensive Care Unit with COVID-19 received a 181-page itemized bill that totals more than $1.1 million, The Seattle Times reported.
Michael Flor, 70, will likely foot little of the bill due to his being insured through Medicare, according to the report.
"I feel guilty about surviving," Flor told The Seattle Times. "There's a sense of 'why me?' Why did I deserve all this? Looking at the incredible cost of it all definitely adds to that survivor's guilt."
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A 70-year-old man in Seattle, Washington, was hit with a $1.1 million 181-page long hospital bill following his more than two-month stay in a local hospital while he was treated for — and nearly died from — COVID-19.
"I opened it and said 'holy (expletive)!' " the patient, Michael Flor, who received the $1,122,501.04 bill told The Seattle Times.
He added: "I feel guilty about surviving. There's a sense of 'why me?' Why did I deserve all this? Looking at the incredible cost of it all definitely adds to that survivor's guilt."
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According to the report, Flor will not have to pay for the majority of the charges because he has Medicare, which will foot the cost of most if not all of his COVID-19 treatment. The 70-year-old spent 62 days in the Swedish Medical Center in Issaquah, Washington, 42 days of which he spent isolated in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
Of the more than one month he spent in a sealed-off room in the ICU, Flor spent 29 days on a ventilator. According to the Seattle Times, a nurse on one occasion even helped him call his loved ones to say his final goodbyes, as he believed he was close to death from the virus.
While in the ICU, Flor was billed $9,736 each day; more than $80,000 of the bill is made up of charges incurred from his use of a ventilator, which cost $2,835 per day, according to the report. A two-day span of his stay in the hospital when his organs, including his kidneys, lungs, and heart began to fail, cost $100,000, according to the report.
In total, there are approximately 3,000 itemized charges on Flor's bill — about 50 charges for each day of his hospital stay, according to The Seattle Times. Flor will have to pay for little of the charges — including his Medicare Advantage policy's $6,000 out-of-pocket charges — due to $100 billion set aside by Congress to help hospitals and insurance companies offset the costs of COVID-19.
Flor is recovering in his home in West Seattle, according to the report.
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