Janice Hernandez (@janiceheartss) is a 25-year-old mother from Nevada. Her daughter was born with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS), a rare genetic disorder, and stayed in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) for around two months. The medical bill? Over $700,000.
TikTok: @janiceheartss / Via tiktok.com
Janice revealed the amount she owed in a now-viral TikTok, which has accumulated over 3.5 million views. “I just got the bill for my daughter’s NICU stay,” she says disbelievingly in the video. “Do you guys want to know how much it is? Do you guys want to converse? Have a conversation about the price?”
“738,360 freakin’ dollars,” Janice says, showing the bill. “Almost a million dollars.”
The 25-year-old was given an itemized bill showing everything that was charged, and Janice “swears there are things [the hospital] didn’t do” and that she was overcharged for other items. For example, the hospital charged $25 for a small tube of Aquaphor, which Janice thought was given to her out of nicety and convenience. “They made sure to charge for every single little thing,” she says in the TikTok.
Janice told BuzzFeed that one of the most shocking amounts on the bill was how much each room transfer was. Her daughter was moved twice to a different section of the hospital and was moved an additional three times while in the NICU. In a follow-up TikTok, Janice says each room transfer cost $4,337. “Literally just one room down, maybe across the hall — within the same, like, unit,” she reveals. “If I had known they would cost that much, I would’ve gotten on the bed myself and had them roll me over! It was us walking with the baby and one transporter.”
Janice’s video has received nearly 8,000 comments, many of them being of parents sharing similar experiences — and others of non-Americans expressing confusion and disbelief. As one parent who lives in the US wrote: “My son had 4 open heart surgeries before he was 5 months old & it was over $6,000,000.”
Conversely, parents from countries with universal healthcare shared their stories in the comment section. “I’m in Canada,” a parent explained. “I’ve had 2 NICU babies with a combined 7 months in the nicu. My bill. $0. Not telling you to rub it in, but to show you exactly how bad your system is. We paid for parking.”
Janice told BuzzFeed that, at one point, it felt like her daughter was being kept in the NICU “for no reason.” Though she has PWS — which occurs in approximately 1 in 15,000 births — what ultimately got her discharged was receiving an operation to place a feeding tube inside her stomach. Janice and her family were sent home with equipment, but she explained to BuzzFeed: “If they had just offered this early on, we would’ve been able to bring her home way sooner! But they waited two months.”
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“I do believe the healthcare system of America has been pretty corrupt for a long time,” Janice said. “As of right now, we still have no news as to how much insurance is going to cover.”
If you’ve experienced something similar with the hospital, what happened? What was the most shocking thing you were charged for in an itemized bill? Let us know in the comments, or you can anonymously submit your story using this form.
For more content, you can follow Janice on TikTok!
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