How much have you spent on medical bills?

Holy cow Aerose!

My first three years when I was treating with a LLND for two years and one year of self treating - Between $7000-$10,000. (Estimation)

Since changing to Dr J, it has cost me between $15000-$17,000
(Past 2 1/2 years) quick estimate. Appt cost, flights, meals...
But since going to Dr J my husband has claimed medical expenses including travel - on income tax and have received $$ back. Guessing it’s approx $3000 for both years - so that reduces the costs to $12,000 - $14,000

Grand total $19,000 to $24,000 for almost 6 years.

This is not counting supplements.

Including supplements, doctors, specialists, tests, acupuncture, treatment devices, books, craniosacral therapy, and root canal extraction:

Year 1: $12,000
Year 2: $12,000
Year 3: $12,000 (including an $8,000 AmpCoil)
Year 4: $6,000 (including a $2,000 root canal-treated tooth extraction)
Year 5 (just the past five months): $1,500

With supplements, RX and Dr chiro appts= about $5,000 USD each year during LLMD for a few years =so 15K

But chasing symptoms and trying to treat symptoms of unknown cause for a decade before, 2k per year x 10 =20K

So I suppose 35K.

And that was with good private health insurance thru a employment. If I payed 100%, I could have seen this 35K grow to 85K.

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Also lost income from not being 100% from pain and brain fog for 30 years, how does one estimate that?

From my healed point on, my better diet and supplements add another $150 per month to live better I suppose, but that could offset other "mature age" health problems that kill heath clueless adults every day.

Forgot you have been fighting this for that long, Aerose.

I used to get upset thinking about the cost of this disease - when I add on the lack of income since end of 2013 to now - it’s depressing.

Another $250 - $300 thou.

16 months, $35,000
A lot in the beginning with MRIs, specialists, and searching for a diagnosis.

My cost would be higher if I had to pay for all the mri’s , X-rays, ct scan
- had many done the first two years.

Also if I had to pay for the appts with the two endocrinologists, the Neurologist, Neurosurgeon, Physiatrist, Ear/Nose/Throat Dr.

How do you deal with the debt? Has anyone had any luck with those patient advocacy groups or bill assistance?

Are you referring to CareCredit?
or bill lowering companies like lowpayor.com, copatient.com, etc?

Over the last 6 years, my bill for this has been $100,000 not counting the odd health benefit from canadian health like x-rays. Wife is healthier at about $40,000. All my pension money has gone to the naturopath and then some. I still try to work to have spending money. I had a fight with Canada income tax people and they do not want to count the supplements that the nat doc uses. I lost and the tax department disallowed $30,000 of that as deductions. THEY THINK THAT BUYING SUPPLEMENTS TO FIGHT LYME IS SIMILAR TO GOING TO THE CASINO. But i am winning the game now. Taking MSM since last December and i have put aside my two canes now for almost a month. That inflamed huge knee is slowly healing and i feel on cloud nine as i walk with a very limping gait. BUT I AM WALKING WITHOUT CANES NOW. WOW. Looking at the local mountains trying to decide which one i am going to climb when that right leg is fully useful again. At age 76

karen ramos said...
Either way, I'm still stuck with bill, how did you deal with it? I google searched for a while and so far the best I came up with is lowpayor.com and copatient.com. I did lowpayor.com because it was the easiest. But I'm not sure how good they will be.

I wasnt even aware of instotuations that help with medical expenses. How reliable are these?

Have you all submitted and claimed your expenses on your income tax filing?

Both my husband received $$ back the past couple years.
Even tho I haven’t been working - we can do income splitting here in Canada - maybe you can in the US also?

I just got desperate and googled for help. There are a handful of these services like california medical billing advocates which is a not for profit. I started with them several weeks ago and they seem nice. But there was alot of waiting and sending in signed documents for HIPAA release. If you google this stuff, you will get a handful of services but there's a lot of back and forth. I'm crossing my finger with the new one I tried (lowpayor). Their site was easier to use, uploaded my bill and I signed the HIPAA form online. It didn't require me to wait for a service rep. Everything was done in like 10 min. I got an email from a rep at the company and they said they will do a free evaluation.
We will see....