US man survives Covid-19, gets a whopping Rs 8 crore hospital bill

An elderly man who battled coronavirus for 62 days at a hospital in the US has been handed over a staggering 181-page bill of $1.1 million (nearly Rs 8 crore).

Michael Flor, 70, who became the longest-hospitalised Covid-19 patient at Swedish Medical Center in Issaquah, a city in King County, Washington state, and survived, knew the bill would be a hefty one but looking at 181-page long bill left him in shock.

He came so close to death in the spring that a nurse held a phone to his ear while his wife and kids said their final goodbyes, reports The Seattle Times. Recovering at his home in West Seattle, Flor said his heart almost failed for the second time when he saw the hospital bill.

His ICU room was billed at $9,736 per day and the total cost came to $408,912 only for his stay in the ICU. "He also was on a mechanical ventilator for 29 days, with the use of the machine billed at $2,835 per day, for a total of $82,215. About a quarter of the bill is drug costs," the report mentioned.

For two days when his heart, kidneys and lungs were all failing, the bill was nearly $100,000 as doctors "were throwing everything at me they could think of," Flor was quoted as saying. In all, there are nearly 3,000 itemised hospital charges, about 50 per day.

Good news is that since Flor had insurance including Medicare, he won't have to pay the vast majority of it, the report added. "I feel guilty about surviving. There's a sense of 'why me?' Why did I deserve all this? Looking at the incredible cost of it all definitely adds to that survivor's guilt," Flor said. According to the latest reports, the COVID-19 cases in the US have surged past 21 lakh. So far, 1,16,831 people have died due to the novel coronavirus in the country.