Does your Insurance Cover Snake Bites? Insurance denies $200K in medical bills after son recovers from Snake Bite

Monday morning, 6-year-old Kyden Debyah, was playing in his backyard when he was bitten by a pygmy rattle snake that was coiled up underneath his tire swing. Thankfully the mother was very vigilant and quickly identified the type of snake and was able to get the boy to the hospital in order to get the proper care and antivenom he needed.

Snake Anti-Venom Treatment

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The anti-venom for snake bites is call CroFab. CroFab is a sheep-derived antivenin indicated for people have been bitten by rattlesnakes, copperheads and cottonmouths/water moccasins.

Each person generally receives 4 to 6 vials of antivenom depending on the initial severity of symptoms. This dose will then need to be repeated if the initial dose not appear to have stopped the progression of symptoms such as redness, swelling, and pain. However, once the symptoms are controlled and the bitten area does not appear to be progressing anymore, an additional two vials will be given every 6 hours for the next 18 to 24 hours. As you can see from the chart below and the general recommended dosing of antivenom, each person general requires anywhere between 4 and 18 vials of antivenom.

The Cost of Snake Anti-Venom

Each vial of CoFab antivenin costs around $11,000. As you can see from the quote from the boy's mother, he required 18 vials of anti-venom at $11,000 each, which equals $198,000 in total, just for the antivenom.

“The anti-venim is, $11,000 per vial, our cost. He had 18 of them.”

This does not even take into account the cost of the hospitalization stay, since each person is required to be monitored in the intensive care unit (ICU) while being treated in the hospital.

Now normally, you'd think that hopefully this family has insurance and they will only be responsible for a fraction of the entire medical bill since they are insured right? WRONG!!! In fact, the family has insurance but it does not cover snake bites! The insurance company said their contracted cost for the antivenin will be adjusted but could be anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000!!! To me that is just simply egregious!!! Beyond that, looking at the price increase of CroFab over the years sheds more light onto the price gouging pharmaceutical companies are doing to their drugs. For instance, the price of CroFab in December of 2000 was $1,937.50 per 2 pack of vials. In 2009, this price rose to $1,200 per vial. In 2012, it rose even more to $2,000 per vial and now in 2018 it is at $11,000 per vial.

Let me leave you with this simple question. What else in any other market, other than drugs, has seen that kind of price rise over the years? Even worse these are life saving medications!!

To put this into comparison even further, from the end of 2014 to september 2017, Bitcoin rose over 2000% and had reached national news. Yet, from 2009 to 2018 the price of snake anti-venom has risen just about 1000%, insurance companies aren't covering it, and not a sole is talking about it.