In a country where medical bills are already costing people a leg and a kidney, one Texas woman still couldn’t believe a hospital would charge her $20,000 for a rabies vaccination. Now, it’s common knowledge that the first shot costs a fortune, which is why Reddit user SayahhD applied for an assistance program for a replacement vaccine for low-income patients. In her post on r/mildlyinfuriating, she claims she was approved, but after the replacement arrived, her hospital “destroyed it so they could charge her the full bill.”
Like at any hospital or clinic, someone has to sign off on a medication delivery before it can be accepted and provided for a patient. According to SayahhD, the pharmacy of her hospital claims to have “no knowledge” of the rabies vaccination replacement she was approved for. “The nurse navigator who originally signed off on my forms suddenly said he had ‘no knowledge of an incoming rabies vaccine,’ despite having allegedly met in person twice for paperwork.
Since the pharmacy couldn’t accept the vaccine replacement, it was destroyed, resulting in OP getting billed the initial $20,000 for the shot. Of course, OP confronted the nurse navigator over the sudden change in plans. “He just said, ‘I understand your concerns, but I’m going to have to direct you to our patient relations dept, ‘ and had kept his mouth shut from there,” SayahhD recalled.
Whether intentional or accidental, SayahhD was now the one to suffer the consequences of the hospital staff’s mistake, a $20K mistake. Needless to say, this isn’t simply “mildly infuriating,” so the moderators of the subreddit removed OP’s original post, telling her to take her story to r/extremelyinfuriating instead.
Reddit Urges the Texas Woman to Fight Back
Several thousand people were able to catch wind of the drama before the post was closed, and many couldn’t believe the hospital would do this to her. “This has to be a crime, right? Even in America this must be a crime,” a user wrote in disbelief. “Definitely don’t just accept that without pushing back first,” demanded another commenter, who was responding to the suggestion of starting a dispute with the billing department.
“That whole situation makes no sense,” remarked a third. A fourth Redditor agreed, saying that “the hospital violated the terms of the Grifols Patient Assistance Program (PAP) by doing that. There’s no reason that they couldn’t accept the replacement vaccine,” they wrote. SayahhD believes it was an error on the hospital’s part, but the issue is that it’s made up of “fractured departments and everyone denying culpability basically.”
The Texas rabies patient has yet to report on whether she plans to take legal action against the hospital or follow any of the suggestions from Reddit. Besides the hassle and effort of pursuing legal recourse, SayahhD claims that it’s “one of the biggest hospitals in the entire country,” so she’s unsure even government officials could help her fight her way out of this one.
