Here’s an article that was posted by ABC News yesterday:

N.C. Man Allegedly Robs Bank of $1 to Get Health Care in Jail

A man in North Carolina had some medical issues that he was unable to get treatment for because he was unemployed and didn’t have any health insurance. So earlier this month he thought his best bet was to rob a bank so that he could get arrested, go to jail, and get the medical care he needed in jail. How much money did he demand from the teller? $1.00. That’s right. A single dollar. All he wanted to do was get arrested so he could get medical care in prison.

It’s pretty sad the lengths people will go to get health care in this country. We often say that the United States is the best country in the world. And it might be in certain aspects. But when it comes to health care, and the cost of health care, I’m going with a no. I’ll admit that I was pretty oblivious to how much healthcare costs until we had James. I don’t remember what the exact cost was, but the charge per day for James to be in the NICU was somewhere around $3,000. That’s per day! He was in the NICU for two months; 61 days to be exact. $183,000 dollars just for him to be in the NICU. And that doesn’t include any of the surgeries that he had, or any of the doctors that treated him, or any of the medications that he was given. I remember looking over the charges that were billed to insurance. Every time a doctor came to see James, it was $200. The doctor could have just stopped by for 5 minutes just to check in on James. $200 was billed to insurance. The total cost for James’ two months in the NICU was over $300,000. I’m sorry, but that is frickin’ crazy! I’m thankful we have health insurance. What if we didn’t? Would we be stuck paying that bill? I don’t know how we’d pay that. We’d either be making monthly payments for the rest of our lives, or we’d rob a bank and hope we didn’t get caught.