My little sister began going to a therapist at her college in March after being informally diagnosed with severe depression. She kept it a secret from everyone except her therapist until it got worse and worse, to the point that she was coming up with suicide plans and doing nothing but staying in bed all day. After finally opening up to me she checked herself into an inpatient unit (psych ward) and was there for nine days.
At the unit her vital signs were checked each day, and she had a total of one or two electrocardiograms and one or two urinalyses over the nine days. She was also given a daily fluoxetine pill (an antidepressant) starting on the third day. She didn't request or receive anything extra; she simply stayed in the ward, ate the given meals, and attended group therapy sessions. The bill ended up being $50,000 for nine days of minimal* care, and insurance has said twice that they will not pay a cent. (*I say minimal because some other patients underwent electroshock therapy while my sister simply got food, shelter, nine antidepressant pills, and at most two electrocardiograms and two urinalyses.)
Our family appreciates that she had a safe place to go, but we simply cannot afford to pay $50,000 and we don't know how insurance can expect us to. We are frantically researching now but would really appreciate any advice that we can find here. Thank you so much Reddit!
Submitted January 19, 2017 at 01:59AM by hospitalbills http://ift.tt/2jBL6RR
