Parents Hit with Nearly $300,000 Bill After Their 2-Year-Old Needed Antivenom for a Snake Bite

• Toddler Brigland Pfeffer from San Diego ended up in the pediatric intensive care unit after a rattlesnake bite on his right hand
• His parents received a bill of almost $300,000 for his treatment – and a third of the cost was for his life-saving antidote treatment
• Although the Pfeffers’ insurance company was able to negotiate a reduction in costs, the family still had to pay thousands to care for the two-year-old

A toddler bitten by a rattlesnake received emergency antivenom treatment to save his life – and now his parents have been hit with a nearly $300,000 bill.

Brigland Pfeffer was playing with his siblings in their backyard in San Diego when he ran up to his mother, Lindsay, to show her the injury on his right hand.

“I saw a little rattlesnake curled up next to the pit,” she told KFF Health News via The Washington Post.

Picture of a rattlesnake.

CARL DE SOUZA/AFP/Getty

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By the time the family arrived at Palomar Medical Center Escondido by ambulance, the 2-year-old’s arm was swollen and purple. When attempts at intravenous antidote failed, Brigland was given the antidote Anavip, injected directly into his blood marrow as the swelling spread to his armpit.

Brigland was then transferred to the pediatric intensive care unit at Rady Children’s Hospital, where he received additional antivenom therapy over the next few days.

Total bill: $297,461 — with antivenom costs making up $213,278.80 of the bill.

Brigland received 20 vials of Anavip – $5,876.64 per vial – at Rady Children’s. Ten bottles at Palomar cost $9,574.60 per bottle. But Stacie Dusetzina, a professor of health policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said Medicare and most hospitals pay $2,000 for each unit of the drug.

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Image of snake venom being collected in a syringe.

NIKLAS HALLE’N/AFP via Getty

“When you see the word ‘charges,’ that’s a fictional number. This is usually not related to the actual price of the drug at all,” Dusetzina told the publication.

As Smithsonian reported, the antidote can be complicated to produce, since a donor animal must be injected with the venom — and then their antibodies collected for treatment. (In the case of Anavip, the donor animal is a horse.)

but still Smithsonian reported that up to 70% of costs “are due to hospital markups used in negotiations with insurance companies.”

Pfeffers’ insurance company was able to negotiate a reduction in costs, but the final amount is unknown.

The brigand was left with a scar and nerve damage on his right hand from a snake bite, and is now left-handed.

A picture of venom being extracted from a snake.

Getty

“He’s very, very lucky,” says his mom, Lindsay, who adds that the family has installed a fence specifically designed to keep snakes out around their property.

PEOPLE has reached out to Palomar Medical Center and Rady Children’s Hospital for comment.

And like Smithsonian reported: “It might be best to skip taking a selfie with a rattlesnake unless you’re a millionaire.”

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Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education