I’ve lost everything.
But I’m alive.
After explaining the CRC first aid plan to my wife (hour #2), I took a walk outside to consider what things needed to be marshalled immediately and longer term, our massive change of plans. I also realized we could go broke without careful planning and that to maneuver, we needed to know lots of prices and hidden costs.
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We used to have sporadic discussions of costs on the forum but they seem to have faded after the increased socialization of insurance and the expansion of limits in the US. The billed costs of cancer have always been considered (potentially) cripplingly high in the US across the generations but with huge increases. Today the battles are often much longer with nominal price tags that are highly variable with location and circumstances. One of the things I'm still in the dark about are the average monthly and total costs of a campaign at MSK (e.g. full costs for 1-2 yrs for HAI) or MDA.
It might be useful to discuss various numbers in terms of the resources mobilized, as well as prices in various locales. For us, we lowered our out of pocket costs but the invested time and efforts were high.
One shot across the bow, was the cancer blog from someone I knew in college that died in 2008 with moderate income but great insurance. They spent $4 million in 3 years on a recur, largely with CTCA, after sent home elsewhere, surprised on a followup visit (NED to almost dead, CEA ca 400 due to lax BrC monitoring guidelines). For US and wealthy private patients overseas, aggressive patients would blow through their insurance limits and savings in 1-2 years before becoming highly cost conscious. Part of the problem was lack of good cost information, or even early rough numbers at a distance.