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She Left After Waiting Hours in the Emergency Room. The ER Billed Her Anyway.
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this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2026
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Similar thing happened me.
TLDR: Went to two ER's. The first one said they couldn't help us and charged us over $1000, the second went to bat for us with our insurance and got the cost knocked down.
Full story.
I had a daughter (~4-ish) who was experiencing unexplained symptoms that appeared almost overnight.
She had complained of pain when moving her arms and developed, what looked like a sunburn, on her back. I put calamine lotion on it and put her to bed. The next morning, as I was rinsing her off in the shower, her skin just started sloughing off where I had put the lotion. It looked like a chemical burn to me.
It was a Saturday morning. Immediately went to urgent care. The Dx said he had no idea and that it looked like a chemical burn to him too. Said I needed to go to an ER. I went to the closest ER (Houston Methodist Willowbrook Hospital). It was empty. They checked us in, put her in an examination room and took her vitals. After an hour, a doctor came in and said they don't know what the issue is, they don't have a pediatrician on duty, and they can't really help us!? The Dx then suggested I take her to Children's in downtown Houston, and they would arrange an ambulance. Fuck that, I told them no and I took her myself right away.
Got to Children's ER, they put us in an examination room right away. Within 5 minutes, a nurse was in the room and immediately diagnosed her with a stage 4 staph infection (scalding skin syndrome). She gave her an I.V. and they started pushing antibiotics and morphine. (Later had to swap pain meds, because the morphine made her itch and every where she itched, her skin would come away.) I still have to fight back the tears when I think about it. They said if we had waited another 8 hours, she would have likely died. She spent five days in the hospital recovering. But she did recover and is doing very well now.
So, two different stories about hospital billing from this experience.
The first hospital charge us over $1000 for the visit. $1,000 to be told we can't help you, but let us make you sit and wait while this infection progresses in your child.
Children's was out of network for our United Healthcare plan and UH passed the full bill on to us. However, Children's actually went to bat for us and negotiated with them and got them to give us the in-network rate and paid off 80% of the bill. Not before or since have I had a hospital help us like that.
We ignored the bill from the other hospital. Fast forward a few months and the hospital is calling us. I sat on the phone with the lady talking to me and I argued (nicely) that I felt it was unreasonable for them to even accept us, knowing they didn't have a pediatrician on duty, and actually put us at risk by delaying treatment. I actually got her to admit that she agreed that it did not seem right.
Then the bill just went away and never heard from the hospital or anyone else again about it. So I am assuming they wrote it off. I know that medical debt is sold to debt collectors sometimes, but we have not seen or heard from anyone for over ten years.
I get that hospitals are stuck between a rock and a hard place sometimes, especially in the states, but my experience, the experience of the woman in the article, and the fact we spend more money on healthcare, per capita, than countries with a fully socialized system, just proves to me the lie that is sold to us on a fully private system.