Mr. Glass. I write.
Man receives multi-million dollar hospital bill for Pneumonia.
If you thought your medical bills were outrageous, just imagine how unemployed door attendant, Alexis Rodriguez, felt when he received a multi-million dollar hospital bill in the mail last week. The 28-year-old Rodriguez, a native of the Bronx, was utterly shocked when he opened a bill from the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital and saw the amount owed staring back at him. According to the letter, Rodriguez owed them more than $44 million for services rendered. “I almost had an asthma attack,” Rodriguez said of his reaction to the gargantuan invoice. Last spring the Bronx-Lebanon hospital admitted Rodriguez for treatment what he called of a serious case of pneumonia. He knew he was going to have a hefty bill for the three weeks he spent in the hospital recovering, but says he had no clue it would be this high. After the initial sticker shock wore off, Rodriguez realized something had to be wrong. He called the hospital to find out what was going on. Turns out, he wasn’t the only patient to receive an outrageous bill that day. Apparently, the hospital’s billing agency, PHY Services, had made what they considered “a MINOR mistake”. The company had accidently placed the billing reference numbers in the “amount due” area on a few hundred of the bills they sent out last week. Rodriguez did not find the mistake to be as minor as the hospital did though, “someone could have had a heart attack,” he stated. The hospital apologized for the mix-up and according to a PHY rep they are working to correct the error and send out updated invoices along with an apology letter to all affected patients immediately.
(Source: New York Daily News)
