Healthcare
Removing a Splinter in 2022 Cost Me the Same as Having a Baby in 1989
I raise my middle finger to the U.S. healthcare system
A few months ago, I managed to drive a splinter under my fingernail in the stupidest way possible and wrote a story about it.
That story got 9.4K views and has earned me nearly $400 so far.
Which is a good thing, because now I have the bill.
They charged me $1,521 to remove a splinter!
After insurance.
Are. You. Fucking. Kidding. Me?
The splinter was painful, but it wasn’t a dangerous injury. I cut the nail as short as possible and then my husband and I tried but failed to pull the splinter out ourselves. I would have loved to have gone to the local prompt care to get it out, but I managed to injure myself almost exactly at closing time.
I would also have loved to have waited until morning, but it was just too painful. You’ve probably heard that driving splinters of bamboo under fingernails was a torture technique.
I believe it. I can understand why someone might be willing to tell the torturer where they hid the fortune just to make the pain stop. After all, I was willing to pay a relative fortune to get a nurse practitioner to make my pain stop.
Let’s put this into perspective.
I gave birth to my daughter in 1989, and the hospital offered a special deal if you paid the whole charge ahead of time.
The cost was $1,500.
I am not making this up. That was the total hospital cost. I remember because I had to convince my employer to cut the check ahead of time so we could both save money.
I don’t know if you happen to have had a baby before, but if you have, you probably share my opinion that it’s much harder to get a baby out of your hoo-ha than a splinter out of your finger.
And at the end of the childbirth process, I had an actual baby to take home. Not just a discarded sliver of wood.
I know inflation is a thing, but still.
I thought $1,500 was a lot for a birth, but for a splinter?
If I had known it was going to cost that much, I likely would have dug through the medicine cabinet for some old painkillers so I could have waited until the prompt care opened the next morning. We probably had some leftovers from my husband’s broken leg or knee replacements.
He typically takes about one and then switches to over-the-counter ibuprofen for a day and then switches to willpower.
He’s tough. He likely would have simply gnawed off his own finger to deal with the splinter — especially if he had known it would cost $1,500. (He is not only tough but also cheap. He’s even cheaper than I am, and that is saying something.)
My husband and I were using a sewing needle and the same tweezers I use to pluck that one chin whisker to try to get the splinter out. The nurse practitioner in the Emergency Department had a lot better equipment than ours. She carved away part of my fingernail with a very sharp disposable scalpel, and seconds later the splinter was gone.
I thriftily popped the scalpel into my pocket, just in case I get another stupid splinter. I will do the surgery myself next time.
The relief I felt when I no longer felt the pressure of the splinter pressing against my nailbed is hard to describe.
But the pressure I felt when I saw the bill is also hard to describe.
Again: $1,500 to remove a splinter!
And just to make it clear, they did not even hand me a baby.
I walked out of that hospital with nothing but the purloined scalpel they were going to just throw away.
I called to complain, of course.
I had a lungful of air ready for a rant, but almost immediately I was told I was not looking at the most recent statement. My total out-of-pocket cost, I am told, will actually be less than $300.
Well, that brightened me right up. If you refer to the second paragraph, you will see that I have made almost $400 for this story.
That means I actually made money on this splinter!
That’s a win in my book. I made money and I have a scalpel for future home surgeries. Except for the lack of a new baby, I feel this was a pretty good deal.
If y’all promise to reward me for it, I will go right out and engage in some unsafe woodworking right now.
If you’d like to read the original story about the splinter, here it is:
If for some reason you’d like to see me engaged in the $1,500 birth, have at it:
About me:
I’m a writer and editor in central Illinois. Find me on Substack, Twitter or LinkedIn.
Have you written a related piece? Or, can you recommend one? Please feel free to drop the headline and a link in a comment. Let’s add to the conversation!
