Sticker Shock v2.0

 After Violet's heart surgery at the beginning of 2012, I titled a post "Sticker Shock" based on the bills that we received from Children's Mercy.  Click here to see that post.  We are almost 3 months out from Oliver's surgery and I think we may have all of his bills in hand at this point (and have actually paid most of them). In fact, I believe we are exactly $16.27 away from reaching our max out-of-pocket for insurance for this year.

Yes, out of the $704,366.79 charged, we are down to the final $16 and change.  Wow.  I thought it would be interesting to compare this 2026 bill to the previous heart surgery bills in our house from 2007 and 2012. It seems the largest point of inflation is the "Operating Room Services" which were just under $56K in 2007 for Oliver's major arterial switch operation, $35K in 2012 for Violet's much simpler procedure of just ASD closure, to $432K today for his Bentall procedure.  I was surprised how little Dr. O'Brien's charges changed. Back in 2007, his charges were $11,810 (I'm not sure how much insurance paid of this, however).  For the straightforward ASD closure in 2012, his bill was $3956. And today's charge for a VERY involved, very long Bentall procedure was $20,404 (of which insurance only paid $8699). His inflation didn't begin to keep up with the OR. 

The overall charges from his surgery as a baby were just under $230,000 compared to today of $704,000, which isn't as bad as I thought it might be. Although that $230K was for a month in the hospital, including NICU, PICU and cardiac floor, whereas today's bill was only for 7 days. As I review these bills, I'm once again so very thankful for the care Oliver received from all of his providers at Children's Mercy, both then and now.  I'm thankful that he is doing so well just 3 months post-op, thriving during his first semester at K-State (Calvin has sent us videos of Oliver playing flag football and swing dancing -- nothing is holding him back).  And I'm thankful that insurance picked up the majority of the charges!