The Dengue Misadventure - HMO

Irene'e platelet count was slowly going up. From a low of 9 x10^9/L on day 2, it was already at 157 by day 8. The dengue episode seems to be over. The sigh of relief was short-lived though, she now has fluid on her lungs. When will this end?

Asian Hospital Room Rates

While we were fighting the disease, we didn't mind the costs. After all, Irene's Medicard can cover up to Php200,000. With the doctors telling us that treatment for Dengue would just be hydration and monitoring, for sure this would not cost us more than Php200,000. Wrong.


When we were "checking-in" at the emergency room, the staff already checked which HMO we will be using. Then everyday after that, a representative of Medicard would visit us everyday to update us on our bill and comfort us with the fact that Medicard would cover up to Php200,000 of our bill.

Asian Hospital always had a reputation of being expensive. But checking their room rates and the fixed Php800/day doctor's fee, it doesn't seem that bad. Day after day we were updated with our running bill, with the bags of blood having bulk of the costs. It was only on the 4th day that I started to worry a little bit as our running bill was already at around Php150,000 and still does not include the room and doctors' fee.

By the 5th day, I was already calling my own HMO. Our bill has gone beyond Php200,000. Our company's HMO, Cocolife, of which Irene was also a beneficiary, apparently doe not cover Asian Hospital. Well at least the package given to us employees. A representative visited us and calmly explained everything which basically boils down to they can't do anything. To try and reimburse the bill is the only option.

Irene still has difficulty breathing, and now we'll have an added difficulty, finding money to pay our bill.