You would have lost your job and likely be on medicaid and disability and it would be very unclear if you have or lost your house and possessions but keeping hold of them moving forward would be almost impossible unless you could find a new job which is also highly unlikely.

That depends.

Are you wealthy? If yes, you're fine. If no, you're fucked.

Are you a veteran? Same answers.

Are you poor? You probably died in the waiting room.

This is too hard to answer because of the number of variables at play like, do you have insurance, does your condition/issue qualify you for Medicare, does your job offer disability leave, are you FMLA eligible, do you meet requirements for SSA disability etc.

Anecdotally, in 2017 I spent two non-consecutive months in the hospital. The first visit I came in through the ER, ended up in the ICU intubated and worked my way through each section as I got better.

My second stay I skipped the ICU but had a transplant halfway through. I also was on dialysis for the ~6 months in between.

Dialysis was billed at $7k a visit, roughly $500k in total. The transplant surgery alone was ~$750k. The hospital stays came to about $5k a day on average for roughly $300k in total.

So straight billed amount I was somewhere in the $1.5-$1.7 million range.

Your first stop would be a bankruptcy lawyer.

Honestly, it would depend on what kind of insurance you have in the US. Each employer has a different set of plans.

No insurance? Absolutely screwed. With insurance?

End of 2018 I had a heart attack and open heart surgery with really good insurance.

Emergency Room - $150
8 days in the hospital + open heart surgery from the head of the cardiac department - $100
Drugs and all the oxygen I could carry - $100

Roll forward to January 2019... my company has been bought by a giant company. Health insurance changes. I lose my existing hospital and all my doctors and have to start over in a new system.

7 days in the hospital draining fluid from congestive heart failure - $6,500 - the annual out of pocket maximum for that insurance.

Good news though, hitting the out of pocket maximum on Jan 15 meant all my other medical care the rest of the year was covered at 100%.

How marketable would you say your illness was?

Your options would be: begging strangers on the internet for money and going viral, being rich enough to pay out the ass for really good insurance when you were healthy, declaring bankruptcy, and playing Luigi's Mansion.

Haven’t seen anyone mention maximums. Sometimes insurance plans will straight up stop covering you after a certain price. Like, for the rest of your life. Imagine running up a cancer treatment bill in your teenage years and being cut off until you either die or somehow live long enough to get a job with different insurance.

That is bankruptcy, pure and simple. There's no way you'd financially recover from a four month stint in the hospital.

People have literally unalived themselves here over hospital bills like that.

Thank God you weren't in a shit hole country, like the US.

I spent six weeks in the hospital in the US, and my bill (before insurance) was over $400k.

There are a huge variety of factors but one I think people tend to forget: your state of residence

Massachusetts or Hawaii, you'd prob not be much worse off than your current situation. Most states, you'd likely owe whatever your insurance plan's out of pocket maximum. In most of the Southeast and Texas, you'd probably be launched into the sun

Hmmm. Probably like $500,000. It would be cheaper, but good affordable rates are only available to insurance companies. But with a GoFundMe plan you might save up to a $50,000. Best bet is to get on the evening news with you in total shambles. The good news is you can haggle hospitals here, no joke. Not acceptable anywhere else in the US unless you're buying something hot.

Unless you got a couple of million bucks in your bank account…. Super fucked

My hospital stay billed insurance like $300k for a 5 day stay. It was not critical care but it was specialized. Insurance covered all but like a thousand, I also have a $5k out of pocket max that goes into effect in some situations.

So if my hospital stay was 4 months and I didn't get a bulk discount we're looking at like $7mil USD but with insurance I'd instantly hit my out of pocket max and only be out $5k. Because there are lots of ways insurance can fine print you from actually hitting out of pocket though I don't know

You'd be fine, aside from the attorney's fees for declaring bankruptcy.

...Oh, and probably losing your housing.

In Canada. A very good friend of mine who is around 70 but acts more like in his 30’s which kept him feeling good. Hey we only have one life let’s enjoy it.

Unfortunately it caught up with him a month or so ago.

He was in a vicious motorcycle (his) accident that took an eye, a leg, needed facial reconstruction and wrecked chest. He cannot speak as his jaw is wired shut. I am disabled and cannot get up north to see him. His daughter calls me once in a bit to fill me in.

I cannot begin to comprehend how much his operations, rehab, prosthetics and hospital fees would be in the states. I assume he won’t be getting out for a few months (I am not very knowledgeable on medical stuff) then a ton of therapy. I was told he also has insurance on top of his Ontario health card so hopefully he is in very good hands.

Jury Nullification

Also don't know the answer, but another anecdote.

I was admitted to the ICU where I stayed for about a month, not on any ventilator or any other machines except an IV drip (the medication was very dangerous and needed that level of surveillance). However, I was taking up space, so I was transferred to the next level down, where I spent another month on nothing but just that one IV medication. In total I had two non invasive heart surgeries during my time there.

For basically just room, board, babysitters, and the medication, I was billed over $650,000. I was 26 at the time, in college, no job, living off savings I'd accrued in the military....

Yeahhhh.

my insurance paid $100k for 5 days in critical and 3 in regular room in 2014, 4 months should be 12 times that, plus add inflation

Almost all of these comments are talking about the total billed amount, which is correct. On most plans, you'd hit a certain amount, and they'd start covering a larger portion of the bill. But your out of pocket expense would definitely be in the hundreds per day, (thousands if bad insurance), while the insurance company would pretend they did you a huge favor.

In the U.S. with insurance you would have easily hit the deductible and out-of-pocket costs though that does mean you would have been billed a few thousand dollars easily (on top of the regular monthly insurance costs). Everyone has slightly different health insurance plans so the actual amount would be hard to predict for a hypothetical question.

One thing you got me thinking, I'm not too sure how often U.S. insurers would actually cover someone to literally stay 4 months in a hospital, maybe in rare extreme cases? Insurance companies typically only approve x amount of days/weeks in hospitals or rehabilitation facilities so once you use up those approved days the hospital has to figure out how to get you out or start billing you directly at a few thousand per day.

Depends.

My dad went in the hospital for like probably 3 months, and afiak, their small bussiness is still running. They have insurance.

For everyone else who don't have insurance and don't have any assets, just refuse to pay the bills, like what are they gonna do? Confiscate your organs? (Inb4 they pass the "USA Repossess Organs Act")