Newsletter
California Woman’s Health Care Nightmare – Bleeding Tumor “Not an Emergency”
Date: 10/27/2009By Dan Prescher
October 27, 2009 -- Think the U.S. health care system isn’t broken? How’s this for a health care nightmare.
One morning last April, Rosalinda Miran-Ramirez woke up with her shirt soaked in blood. Her husband rushed her to the emergency room at Seton Medical Center in Daly City, California.
Doctors found a bleeding tumor in her left breast. A biopsy showed the tumor to be benign, much to Miran-Ramirez’s relief.
But her relief was short lived. Three months later her insurance company, Blue Shield of California HMO, sent her a bill for the emergency room visit totaling $2,791.00.
The company determined that Miran-Ramirez "reasonably should have known that an emergency did not exist.”
She appealed, saying that when she woke up covered with blood she couldn’t have known the cause and was reasonably certain it was an emergency.
Blue Shield again denied her claim, saying that she hadn't been in "any acute distress."
Miran-Ramirez said that in her home country of the Philippines, such a health care nightmare would never happen and people wouldn’t be hit with a $3,000 bill for a valid emergency room visit.
In fact, many Americans are moving to other countries to avoid the kind of health care nightmare that Miran-Ramirez is going through. In many places around the world, quality health care is much cheaper than in the U.S.