ER Charges Teacher over $10K After Not Giving Her Coronavirus Test

A teacher was charged over $10,000 after visiting an emergency room in Brooklyn, New York, on March 2 to be tested for the Chinese coronavirus.

Upon her return from a trip to Italy, public school teacher Erin McCarthy, 44, went to the NYU Langone emergency room in Cobble Hill because she was experiencing symptoms associated with the virus, according to Business Insider.

“After a nearly six-hour visit, she said she left without getting tested for the coronavirus and was later slapped with an astonishing medical bill of $10,382.96,” the article stated.

The ER doctor reportedly told McCarthy she was not eligible for testing because even though she displayed some signs of illness, she was not an elderly person and did not have problems with her immune system, according to The City.

McCarthy was given a chest X-ray, then went home with a letter advising her to self-quarantine until there was a “complete resolution” of her symptoms.

However, a few days later she received the bill from the hospital, which stated that her insurance plan had paid $2,957 and that she only owed $75.

“But imagine if I didn’t have insurance,” the teacher said of the ordeal.

Tuesday, management at NYU Langone issued a statement regarding patient billing:

Billing for hospital services is different for each patient, for each provider and each insurer, depending on what the patient is being seen for and what services were provided by the hospital. In addition, there are different parts to a patient bill.  One part is what the hospital charges the insurance company, one part is what the insurance company eventually pays, and the last part is what the patient owes for the services, or the patient co-pay.

The bill in question charged the insurer a fee, the insurer paid a negotiated percentage of that fee — and the patient owed only a co-pay of $75.00.

Following a call from a kind and apologetic staffer named Ellie at the city’s Department of Health, McCarthy finally received the coronavirus test at the New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital in Park Slope.

Friday afternoon, she learned the test came back negative.

Now, McCarthy is taking some time off to recover but is eager to return to her classroom and get back to teaching.

“Putting you through all this, thinking you had this disease, nobody testing you, going into quarantine,” she said, adding, “By the end, I just lost it.”