Think your hospital bill was high?

A hospital bill for $44 million showed up in Alex Rodriguez’ mailbox a couple weeks back.
Although Alex is a resident of New York, he’s not “the” A-Rod, but even the A-Rod who wears pinstripes to work at Yankee Stadium would have been hard-pressed to come up with the $44,000,000 ostensibly owed to Bronx Lebanon Hospital.
Of course, it turned out to be a “billing error”…but I’m probably not the only one who didn’t think the amount wasn’t theoretically possible.
After all, hospitals have been charging patients more and more for the same procedures over the years; the average charge submitted to CMS for Medicare zoomed from around $500 in 1996 to almost $2000 in 2008.
While I haven’t heard of a real bill hitting eight figures, I’m sure there’ve been some that have come close; seven figure bills are much more common than they used to be, with most of my clients getting one or more a year. Carol Gentry of HealthNews Florida reported last year that the estate of a penniless woman was billed $9.2 million by Tampa General Hospital…this case was a mess, complicated by a nasty family dispute, Medicare rules, and legal proceedings.
Here’s hoping you aren’t the first to get a “real” $44 million bill…