Young girl’s snakebite leaves family with $203,000 medical bill

Parents whose daughter feared she would die from a snakebite on school camp were dealt a fresh blow when they got the outrageous medical bill.

A young girl bitten by a snake at summer camp was left with an elephant-size medical bill of $203,000, her parents say.

Oakley Yoder was nine in July last year when a snake bit a toe on her right foot while she was at camp in Shawnee National Forest in Jackson Falls, Illinois, according to the New York Post.

“I was really scared. I thought that I could either get paralysed or could actually die,” Oakley, now 10, told NPR.

Camp counsellors, suspecting the bite was from a venomous copperhead, gave her a piggyback until they reached emergency personnel who recommended taking her to a hospital by air ambulance.

Josh Perry and Shelli Yoder received an outrageous medical bill after young Oakley’s snakebite. Picture: Shelli Yoder

Her frantic parents, Josh Perry and Shelli Yoder, were already waiting at Indiana’s St Vincent Evansville hospital when she arrived after the 129km flight.

“It was a major comfort for me to realise, OK, we’re getting the best care possible,” her dad, a healthcare ethics professor at Indiana University, told NPR.

Their relief at their daughter leaving the hospital after less than 24 hours soon turned to horror when the bills started arriving — totalling $US142,938 ($A202,951), according to the documents shared with NPR.

It included $US55,577.64 ($A78,912) for the air ambulance — and an even more staggering $US67,957 ($A96,489) for four vials of antivenene needed to protect her from the bite.

The bill shows the hospital charged $US16,989.25 ($A24,122) for each unit of CroFab, the only drug available to treat venomous bites from pit vipers at the time — more than five times higher than the average list price of $US3198 ($A4541).

Oakley (centre) worried she would be ‘paralysed or could actually die’ after the snakebite. Picture: Shelli Yoder

“It’s a profitable drug and everyone wants a piece of it,” said Dr Leslie Boyer, founding director of research centre the VIPER Institute.

The family’s health insurance provider negotiated down the bills and paid $US107,863.33 ($A153,150), with secondary insurance from the summer camp covering $US7286.34 ($A10,345) in additional costs.

The family ultimately did not have to pay any out-of-pocket costs for her additional emergency care, according to NPR.

“I know that in this country, in this system, that is a miracle,” admitted Perry who teaches a course on the ethics of the healthcare industry.

Oakley’s foot is now healed — and she intends to return to the camp this summer, she told NPR.

This article originally appeared on the New York Post and was reproduced with permission