Price tag for 2018

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Need proof that asthma is an expensive disease?

So far this year the medical bills associated with treating my asthma total $1,362,067.99. If that, plus the fact that 3500 people still die of the disease annually in the US alone, is not enough reason to invest more in severe asthma research, I don’t know what is.
And while it’s the most Ive racked up in a single year, on average it still costs about a half million dollars to keep this asthmatic alive, and most of that from taxpayer dollars.

Obviously my asthma is very severe and requires a lot more medical care than most, but just imagine how much is spent annually treating all 30 million+ asthmatics in this country… regardless of severity. Ironically, this was one of my better years with only 4 inpatient hospitalizations, but I ended up spending more days in the ICU, which is incredibly expensive.

During the months of Sept and October alone, I had 2 back to back hospital admissions totaling 20 inpatient days. Below is the actual bill for just the last 12 days of that stint and shows just how expensive it can be to treat severe asthma, especially when critical care is required.

I realize that I live in one of the most expensive areas in the world for medical care, but 1.3 million for one year of care? That’s crazy no matter where you live. Even scarier, is that if I didn’t have medical insurance, Id be on the hook for the entire amount.

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