Paradox Blog

My mom was here visiting the Christmas before last. She wasn't in good health and her friends had advised against her traveling across the Pacific ocean. It turned out to be her last trip and our last time together before she underwent a stroke in late March last year, lost her usual wits and passed away in June. While she was here, she suffered a serious asthma attack and had to be hospitalized. Though she was okay after three day's stay, it was clearly a sign of her failing health running amok.

The care given by the El Camino Hospital where she stayed was quite impressive but the cost was huge. She was brought in by ambulance. After the emergency staff determined she did not have a heart attack (she was short of breath and had chest pain) and her life was not in danger she was transferred to the transitional care unit where she was hooked up to monitoring devices to observe the effect of her treatment and ensure a steady recovery. After two days, the tending physician was sure that her condition could be controlled by medicine, she was moved to a regular ward for one more day's observation before she was to be released. The hospital charges over ten thousand dollars for two day's transitional care and one day's regular care. These include every four hour's steam treatment, twice daily lab tests, medicine, meals and beds, but does not include the tending physician's fee and the paramedics and fire engine fee for transportation on an ambulance.

The total cost of an emergency like this amounts to a small fortune. How we wished it would have been covered by insurance. Most traveler's insurance does not cover pre-existed medical condition, our insurance does not cover parents as dependents, her insurance does not cover occurrences outside of Taiwan and the expense is not tax deductible since she was not eligible as a dependent. Though it was difficult to get insurance for her here in the states, we should have tried harder. She had a medical history which made it harder for her to get insurance but ever more reason for her to be insured. All these years while we are over on this side of the ocean going to school or working, she visited us in the harsh winter weather of New York, in the Foster City wind and finally in the mild winter of Sunnyvale. We were running a risk for this to happen and it happened.

In hindsight, there are a lot of things we could have done differently. We could have pay more attention to her health so that she might enjoy longevity. We could have visited home more often to save her the trip over to see us. In fact, she enjoyed coming over here for a change of scene. She enjoyed the hustle and bustle preparing for a trip over, shopping and loading her suitcases with goodies for her fledglings. She enjoyed the novelty of riding on an airplane and living in a foreign country. She felt she had been to places. We should have tried harder getting her health insurance coverage here in the states by lobbying for the corporate employee benefit to cover senior dependents, by buying her a high premium senior insurance in the states, or by finding her an insurance carrier in Taiwan that covers medical emergencies abroad. Whichever way, we would have bought ourselves peace of mind.