A San Diego family was put through the wringer last spring when their 2-year-old son was bitten by a rattlesnake. After the near death experience, his family was left with a $300,000 hospital bill.
The family shared their story with KFF Health News, saying that the initial incident happened a few days after Brigland Pfeffer turned 2 last spring. The little boy was playing with his siblings in their family’s backyard when he was bitten by a rattlesnake that was sitting in their firepit.
Brigland’s mother, Lindsay Pfeffer, noticed he had been bitten, so she quickly called 911, and an ambulance took him to a local hospital, the Palomar Medical Center Escondido.
Upon his arrival at the hospital, Birgland was given antivenom through a procedure that delivers medicine into the patient’s bone marrow. The doctors ended up administering the antibody therapy this way because the emergency room workers couldn’t get an IV inserted.
“They had so many people in that room trying his head, his neck, his feet, his arms — like, everything to find a vein,” Pfeffer shared with the outlet.
The procedure worked, and Brigland was given a dose of the antivenom Anavip. He was then transferred via another ambulance to the pediatric intensive care unit at Rady Children’s Hospital, where he received more of the antivenom.
A few days after the incident, he left the hospital and was healthy. But days later, his parents received the bill.
For the ambulance rides, the emergency room visit, the days he spent in the pediatric intensive care, and the antivenom, the Pfeffers were billed $297,461, KFF reported.
The antivenom alone cost $213,278,80. Broken down, Palomar charged the family $9,547.60 per vial of Anavip. Brigland received 10 vials at the emergency room for a total bill of $95,746. At Rady, he was charged $5,876.64 for each vial. After receiving 20 vials there, he was charged $117,532.80.
KFF reports that each hospital sets its own price for the antivenom, often marking the products up to balance overhead costs and generate value.
Stacie Dusetzina, a professor of health policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, reviewed the bills for the outlet and shared that the charges were “eye-popping,” being that, on average, the hospital pays around $2,000 per vial of Anavip.
“When you see the word ‘charges,’ that’s a made-up number. That isn’t connected at all, usually, to what the actual drug cost,” she said.
Neither hospital responded to requests for comment from KFF.
As for how the bill was settled, KFF reports that Brigland’s health insurance, Sharp Health Plan, negotiated the price of the antivenom down by tens of thousands of dollars and covered most of the bill.
The Pfeffers were left to pay $7,200 of their plan’s out-of-pocket maximum. However, they also had to cover one of the ambulance bills, an additional $11,300, after the insurance didn’t pay it.
Brigland has since healed, though he does have some nerve damage and scar tissue where he was bitten, leaving his right thumb less dexterous and him left-handed. Still, his parents are counting their blessings.
“He’s very, very lucky,” Pfeffer said.