How much does it cost to treat Ebola and who’s paying?
I am wondering if the infected nurses are going to receive a bill for a million dollars and will have to file for bankruptcy (assuming they live). And then someone else will be out a million dollars, although I’m not sure who.
I received a comment from “bob sykes” addressing similar concerns:
Considering the immense resources that were expended on Duncan, including 70 professional care-givers, two of whom contracted Ebola, just what is the capacity of our health care system? One Ebola patient per hospital?
And if the care-givers panic and call in sick, as actually happened at Texas Presbyterian, what happens to general health care? If care-givers aren’t present for the Ebola patient, they aren’t there for anyone.
Lion of the Blogosphere 
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/ebola-patient-needs-dollar500000-to-cover-medical-bills/ar-BB8qYa4
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3213898/posts
Summary from KitJ in comments:
Let me get this straight. The ‘immigrant’ from Africa doesn’t owe anything (probably on account of our ‘free medical care’), and his family is suing the medical system. The white son of hippies is trying to crowd source his half million dollar medical bills.
Imogen
October 15, 2014 at 10:17 AM
Time to sign up for Obolacare, citizens.
Glengarry
October 15, 2014 at 5:20 PM
Presumably workman’s comp, as the disease was almost certainly contracted via the workplace.
massivefocusedinaction
October 15, 2014 at 10:31 AM
Thus all future users of the hospital if the hospital was self-insured for WC. Dogmatic idealism strikes again. BTW – NYTimes editorializes on excessive fixation on media circus involving ebola. Did they make similar claims regarding Ferguson/Trayvon.
Curle
October 15, 2014 at 1:04 PM
That was certainly my first thought. There’s little doubt that this infection occurred at work.
Half Canadian
October 15, 2014 at 2:09 PM
As the health care workers were exposed on the job, it almost certainly counts as an occupational illness, and thus if their insurance doesn’t cover it, the hospital is on the hook.
Us poor schlubs are on the hook for Duncan, though.
Some Guy
October 15, 2014 at 10:32 AM
Hate to say it, but it was probably the best outcome that Duncan died. Had he survived it would have massively compelled other foreigners from high-epidemic areas with high exposure risks to immediately travel to the West upon possible transmission to have a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving.
Can you really blame Duncan for trying? A bunch of people in his own dwelling were dropping dead and the one place that could have helped them is completely overwhelmed and all the patients are dying anyway. Why not take a chance and get potentially life-saving (and free) treatment in the United States?
On balance, made the right bet and actually did a very smart thing, from his individual perspective.
He likely didn’t know he had it, but assumed there was a good chance of infection, given the conditions of his environment. An expensive transnational flight to the US could save his life, and at very worst the only downside he was looking at is a vacation stateside with no infection, and a chance to overstay his visa (or apparently gain permanent residence via a sham marriage) never to return to the disease hot zone that is Liberia.
Duncan even got an experimental drug, though probably too late for it to help him. The bottom line is that the small odds of beating Ebola in the US are infinitely better than the almost certain death of Ebola in Africa.
Everyone here would at least consider doing what he did, including the lies he told and the risks he incurred to everyone else.
Jack
October 15, 2014 at 3:26 PM
I’ve heard in the media that Duncan’s treatment cost about a half a million. Obviously he didn’t have insurance so that’s a bill that the hospital is going to have to eat for the most part. Plus, when all is said and done from the family’s inevitable lawsuit, there will be more funds out the door.
With Pham, it’s a pretty good guess that she has insurance, plus, this is an obvious worker’s comp situation. Any out of pocket amounts might mysteriously vanish if she agrees to not sue, since she seems like she has a better case than Duncan’s family does.
Mike Street Station
October 15, 2014 at 10:47 AM
Off topic: lionoftheblogosphere, have you ever played the (free online) game Town of Salem?
You might like it and/or have some WoW-style comments.
Francis
October 15, 2014 at 11:00 AM
Ultimately the federal government will be billed. I’m confused as to why upwards of 50+ people would be needed to care for him over a short time. That figure alone is part of the problem as it provides so many opportunities for new transmissions.
I’m also surprised that bomb-removal type robots are not being employed to handle biohazardous materials, to limit human exposure.
We can conclude that if a hospital isn’t specifically equipped to handle this virus, it will inadvertently spread it.
Jack
October 15, 2014 at 11:16 AM
First of all, our nation’s health care workers are the ones who will be paying, as the CDC is dumping responsibility onto them and then playing ‘blame the victim’ when Ebola happens.
Two health care workers infected for every patient was the situation in Africa.
Rotten
October 15, 2014 at 11:18 AM
The nurses will probably be covered by the Workers Compensation program, as this will considered a job-related illness. The hospital’s WC insurer will pay all the bills, and their time off will not be charged against their sick leave.
As for Duncan, there will be no compensation.
Black Death
October 15, 2014 at 1:22 PM
I keep hearing the 50-70 personnel required to treat a single patient business; does that mean it really takes that many to treat a single patient, or that many to operate a facility that only one patient has used?
J1
October 15, 2014 at 1:46 PM
I don’t know if anybody’s said this yet, but I love Ebola. Obama will be forever known as the Ebola president.
Sy
October 15, 2014 at 3:01 PM
Actually he’ll be known as the great black President who gave us gay marriage and who was prevented from bringing paradise to America by racist white Republicans. The day he leaves office the media hagiography will be overwhelming.
Being a Liberal means never having to say you’re sorry.
peterike
October 15, 2014 at 4:16 PM
yeah I like the way “Barack Ebola” kinda rolls off the tongue.
caroljm36
October 15, 2014 at 4:18 PM
[…] Lion of the Blogosphere has an interesting question. How much is this going to cost? […]
President Ebola at The Z Blog
October 15, 2014 at 3:24 PM
Ebola is the kind of disease that our privatized health care system is simply not equipped to handle.
Thomas Eric Duncan was an uninsured black man. He went to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital on September 25th with a fever and abdominal pain for several days. He told them he had been to Liberia, but as far as he knew had not been in contact with anyone who was sick. In fact Duncan had helped take a ill pregnant woman to the hospital by taxi and back home when she was refused admission because of lack of space. It is unclear if Duncan realized the woman had Ebola. If he did, he lied about it. Had he told the nurses at the hospital that he may have been in contact with an Ebola patient, he probably would have been placed in isolation much more quickly and not sent home.
If Duncan had insurance, the hospital probably would have treated him differently. For patients with insurance hospitals will usually do every test and procedure than can justify, and someone who just arrived from Liberia with fever and stomach pain, they could easily justify putting in intensive care isolation and running Ebola tests. Not diagnosing Duncan more quickly put many other people at risk.
What I find interesting is that the very same people who have been complaining about too much federal government control of the US health care system are now complaining that the CDC is not doing enough about Ebola. There are thousands of hospitals in the US. Most are probably not really prepared to handle an Ebola patient.
Does the CDC have the authority to force every for profit and privately owned non-profit hospital to buy equipment and train staff to handle Ebola patients, even though most will never see one?
MikeCA
October 15, 2014 at 5:23 PM
Why does everyone keep harping on his insurance status. I can assure you that the physicians and nurses have no idea as to a patients insurance status when they come through the ER. We treat all comers, regardless of ability to pay.
Determining payment is the job of the paper pusher registration person who comes around after the decision to admit is made. Care regardless of ability to pay in the ER is in fact mandated by law… EMTALA anyone?
Anyone who has spent any amount of time doing ER or inpatient medicine is well familiar with this.
It is laughable to me that Duncan’s death is being portrayed as being the result of the big bad privatized health system.
The real culprits here are:
1. the deplorable conditions in Liberia/west Africa and
2. healthy dose of EMR-fugue courtesy of the government bureaucracy that forced HITECH on those of us trying to do the right thing in patient care. Anyone who actually works in healthcare can tell you the current EMRs are built purely to support increased coding/billing revenue and that’s the reason the hospitals wanted them so badly. What a joke. I’m glad I spent thirty thousand hours studying and training to become a data entry clerk.
3. Incompetent government bureaucrats at the CDC who can’t see the forest for the trees. “Well working with Ebola in a lab requires level 4 biohazard suits but for those of you on the ground in Dallas some medical tape and paper gowns should do just fine”
JustADoc
October 15, 2014 at 11:02 PM
If a patient shows up in the ER with a fever and upset stomach, nobody has to tell the doctors this person is uninsured. People with insurance don’t go to the ER with those symptoms. Doctors and nurses working in ER understand perfectly well what is going on. If an ambulance brings in someone injured in an auto accident, the ER will treat him with no regard to whether he is insured or not, but the people with fevers and upset stomach are going to get second class treatment in ER.
If Duncan had health insurance he would have gone to see his doctor or to an urgent care clinic that only accept patients with insurance (or the means to pay).
mikeca
October 16, 2014 at 4:04 AM
It is interesting to me how people who are clearly not physicians or nurses presume to know and predict what the behavior of an actual physician is.
The majority of people coming to the ER come for non emergent issues. You are far more likely to get second class care in an urgent care because there is no EMTALA regulation.
The salient facts in the Duncan case indicate that the major miss was not asking/figuring out where he came from.
He received quite a thorough workup for fever, looked for basically everything except for Ebola that was clearly not on the doc’s radar (admittedly a miss).
He got a CT abdomen/pelvis, CT brain, labs, IV fluids, etc.
Sure sounds like he was treated like a second class citizen and denied care there. That’s a multi thousand dollar workup right there and, absent the current Ebola crisis would have been overkill for most people in the ER with fever.
Admittedly was it great care? No. Obviously not as the diagnosis was missed.
Did his insurance status have anything to do with it? No.
So much for the conspiracy theory of doctors and nurses trying to keep people out of the ER/hospital.
JustADoc
October 16, 2014 at 6:18 PM