Family hit with £110k medical bill after daughter, 9, bitten by snake at summer camp
THE parents of a young girl bitten by a snake at summer camp have been left with an eye-watering medical bill of £110,000.
Oakley Yoder, nine, was bitten by a deadly copperhead snake on her right foot while she was at camp last July – leaving her toe permanently deformed.
The youngster had to be rushed to hospital and was evacuated out of Shawnee National Forest in Jackson Falls, Illinois, in an air ambulance.
Oakley, now ten, told NPR: “I was really scared. I thought that I could either get paralysed or could actually die.”
Camp counsellors, suspecting the bite was from a venomous copperhead, gave her a piggyback until they reached emergency crews, according to the New York Post.
Her frantic parents, Josh Perry and Shelli Yoder, were already waiting at Indiana’s St Vincent Evansville hospital when she arrived after the 80-mile flight.
Her dad, a health care ethics professor at a local university, said: “It was a major comfort for me to realise, OK, we’re getting the best care possible.”
But their relief at Oakley leaving the hospital after less than 24 hours soon turned to horror when the bills started arriving — totalling £110,000 ($142,938).
It included £42,500 ($55,577) for the air ambulance — and an even more staggering £52,000 ($67,957) for four vials of antivenin needed to protect her from the bite.
The bill shows the hospital charged £13,000 ($16,989) for each unit of CroFab, the only drug available to treat venomous bites from pit vipers at the time.
This was more than five times higher than the average list price of £2,500 ($3,198).
Dr. Leslie Boyer, founding director of research centre the VIPER Institute, said: “It’s a profitable drug and everyone wants a piece of it.”
The family’s health insurance, IU Health Plans, negotiated down the bills and paid £82,500 ($107,863), with secondary insurance from the summer camp covering £5.500 ($7,286) in additional costs.
The family ultimately did not have to pay any out-of-pocket costs for her additional emergency care, according to NPR.
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“I know that in this country, in this system, that is a miracle,” admitted relieved dad Perry, who teaches a course on the ethics of the health care industry.
Oakley’s foot is now healed — and she intends to return to the camp this summer, she told NPR.
- A version of this story originally appeared on the New York Post.
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