Originally Posted by
indyfabz
You have a prosthesis? What type? I had a St. Jude aortic installed in August of 1990. IIRC, the hospital bill was $60K. That did not include things like surgeon fees and the cost of the valve itself, which I believe was around $2,500 back then.
Fortunately, I was a student and still covered under my mom's excellent insurance through her job as a public school teacher. Since I had been in the hospital for the cardiac cath less than 90 days before the surgery, I didn't have to pay the $500 deductible. My end of the $60K was $14 or so for the phone.
i got an edwards perimount 3000. that one in dec '89 had a new anti-calcium treatment, supposed to last longer without needing replacement. and it's made of cow pericardium! now i'm beefcake inside AND out!
i had world nomads travel health insurance at the time...they gave me the runaround....refused to pay for cosmetic surgery, refused to pay for experimental procedures, refused to pay for elective surgery, refused to pay for cosmetic surgery....blahblahblah. so, um, no 5-star recommendation for world nomads from me. was actually critical, valve area had reduced to 0.6cm. when they pulled the valve, it crumbled into 7 wee, tiny, calcified chunks.
was living in china studying at university, flew to chennai apollo hospital, in-patient for about a week, then two weeks at a beach resort to recover, then flew back to china. really good doctor, had done over 4000 procedures. hospital food was most excellent, but the 5 channels of bollywood musicals on the talking box was ungroovy.
total bill including flights and resort was about $12K, put on the credit card. instead of paying it off, transferred to a 0% deal and invested in stocks. recycled over ten years and tripled the money, then finally paid it off.