The insurance company won’t fully cover a hiker’s med-flight and he’s wondering why. The money quote:
But when Jane and I have spent upward of $25,000 on premiums over the last decade to protect us during such emergencies and we’re only reimbursed at 40 cents on the dollar, something is wrong.
Physician reimbursement also is becoming a fraction of the dollar – join the club.
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{ 6 comments }
My favorite Med-flight story: When I was a resident in Boston a guy was “med-flighted” from Martha’s Vineyard after being found unconscious on the floor of a church. Someone thought he had suffered a stroke. The homeless drunk woke up in our trauma room after vomiting up a Fifth of Vodka and wanted to know who was going to pay to row him back to the island. Your tax dollars hard at work!
My favorite rescue story is from San Bernardino mountains is Southern Ca. Rugged country but quite difficult to get hopelessly lost. Walking down any creek bed would lead you to the Palm Springs desert area with 300k people or the Inlan region with 2 million people.
Two mountain bikers got lost, left their bikes and were rescued by mountain search and rescue. Next day they went back out looking for their bikes, got lost again and required rescue again
$25K over a decade comes to $2500 per year, a tiny fraction of what my wife and I pay. Perhaps if he had paid for a better policy, maybe?
As to the getting lost story, I’ve always wondered how people can get lost. Trapped I can understand, but lost? The sun rises in the east, sets in the west. If the sun is high put a stick in the ground and watch the shadow: it basically moves east. At night there are the stars, plus you can see the light from major cities for a hundred miles. How can you not know which direction to walk?
I’m surprised Anthem covered ANY of the helicopter bill. It is very expensive to operate a medical helicopter evac and these people may risk their lives when conditions are unfavorable, for instance when one of those hikers gets stranded at high altitude in bad weather. It seems to me health insurers should only cover the medical bills, not be involved in the transportation business. There are special medivac policies available for such circumstances, including foreign travel.
Bruce, after 30 years in SAR (civilian and military, air, land, sea) the reason people get lost is because they believe they can’t.
In other words, stupidity.
However, in the original story, the victim had a pretty significant fx and medevac (through some mode, maybe not helo) was very much indicated. Too bad he got the shaft from Anthem (big suprise)
Wow! I’ve never heard of a helicopter rescue costing anything in Washington. (This must be one of the effects of the Iraq war.)
On a related note, his story makes a great case for becoming a member of the American Alpine Club. Their world wide rescue insurance would have covered the cost of the helicopter evac.
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