After a cabin trip six years ago, TikToker Kate (@the.kate.debate) woke up to find two puncture marks on her five-year-old son’s ear.
They had had an issue with bats getting into the cabin. She knew that they needed to go to the doctor right away.
When the pediatrician measured the width of the marks, they matched the bite mark of a northern Arizona brown bat. The health department called multiple times because there had been a rabies death earlier in the year.
“When you contract rabies and start manifesting symptoms, it is 100% fatal,” said Kate. “Because we were all sleeping in the same room with my son when the exposure allegedly happened, we all had to get rabies shots.”
The worst part of this whole incident was that the rabies shots were not covered by their health insurance, so they were extremely expensive.
Kate made dozens of phone calls to their health insurance providers to try to get the costs covered. In the end, the grand total was $50,000.
She had applied to every single form of medical aid and was rejected by her health insurance. She even applied for special rebates from the rabies vaccine manufacturer.
She was also rejected by the hospital where they received their shots. It was just rejection after rejection, and they were stuck with a huge bill.
“The thing that really bothered me about the experience was getting to know the health insurance process and the billing process,” Kate said.
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“There’s a certain percentage that health insurance companies get to keep from our premiums—80 to 85% of all insurance premiums must go toward paying for care.”
“Then, they don’t bill hospitals on the cost of care. Insurance premiums go up when the cost of care goes up, and it felt like someone was going to swoop in and rescue us from these exorbitant bills, but no one came, and it was just left to my husband and I to pay for these hospital bills over years and time.”
Kate declared that something needs to be done about health care in the United States. In the comments section, many TikTok users shared the large sums of money they, or others they knew, had to spend on medical expenses.
“A coworker got bitten by a rattlesnake. It was $250k for the shots and the hospital bill,” stated one user.
“We had a bat flying around our room at night, so [my husband, my newborn, and I] had to get the series of vaccines. Our insurance covered it ($40,000), but we still had to pay $6k,” commented another.
“2024 rabies shot here. They billed my insurance company $120,000, and I had to copay $3,000. The shots in other countries are under $100 because health care here is a scam,” pointed out a third.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
