77
Bat flies into woman's mouth in Arizona, costing her nearly $21,000 in medical bills
(www.nbcnews.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2025
77 points (100.0% liked)
A Boring Dystopia
13232 readers
1296 users here now
Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.
Rules (Subject to Change)
--Be a Decent Human Being
--Posting news articles: include the source name and exact title from article in your post title
--If a picture is just a screenshot of an article, link the article
--If a video's content isn't clear from title, write a short summary so people know what it's about.
--Posts must have something to do with the topic
--Zero tolerance for Racism/Sexism/Ableism/etc.
--No NSFW content
--Abide by the rules of lemmy.world
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What's particularly annoying about this shit is the human rabies vaccine should not be this expensive. Not by a fucking long shot. It's not much different than the one used on animals and that one is incredibly cheap.
The primary point of cost is Human Rabies Immune Globulin for prophylaxis but that isn't something that's very expensive to produce itself even though the costs are higher than a basic vaccine. It was to a degree when it was only plasma derived(because you needed a bunch of people and their blood and to concentrate it) but that's not the case anymore. Monocolonial antibody production isn't as expensive as biologic medications make it seem. Compare this price to the price of a similarly dosed and sourced(though actually with less donors, look up the old news about the man with the golden arm) medication like RhoGAM at under $200 a dose and you'll find that something smells here.
Edit: and reviewing Indian costs for the immunoglobulin, the around 200 dollar price is right on the mark. But the US market is entirely disconnected from anything like economic reality.
I got a rabies vaccine once and it’s cost me $1080 in total.
Insurance said they worked reimburse me, but they changed their mind step I submitted the paperwork to be reminded.
Fuck United healthcare
Just the vaccine series due to risk or the entire propylaxis after an encounter?
It was 3 injections I think and it was because I was visiting tropical country and the cdc website recommended a series of vaccines.
I mainly got them because insurance said they would reimburse it. But they didn’t and all in all I’m out $2000.
They even admitted that they told me they would reimburse it and they were wrong, but they still refuse to reimburse me.
Yeah so that's just the vaccine itself no immunoglobulin . And you're right the price is insane. For a killed virus rabies vaccine for animals it costs $20 a dose or less for just the vaccine. For administration it's higher and varies but still, the price is just stupid.
If it was cheaper than people who needed it were willing to pay to not die, the manufacturers would be leaving money on the table. Which is maybe how they do things in Communist France, but this is the land of the free…