If you've seen an episode of
House, you must have wondered at least once just how much all the fancy tests cost. The health care debate aside, it's almost a given to expect a patient to undergo a barrage of procedures that, simply by looking at them, you can tell don't come cheap.
Hugh Laurie on Ending 'House': We'll Know Next YearNPR teamed up with
The Medical Science of House, M.D. author Andrew Holtz to figure out just how much it would cost to be under the care (and we use the term loosely here) of television's rudest, most brilliant doctor.
For a case study, they tried to see the cost of diagnosing the patient on
"Ignorance is Bliss" (the Cuddy's sister's Thanksgiving episode). On this installment, genius James Sidis (guest star Esteban Powell) wanted to be dumb and happy rather than smart and miserable. He had depression and addiction, plus other strange symptoms.
Here's how the step-by-step, trial-by-error methods add up:
- liver biopsy because the patient's a drinker = anywhere between $8,000 to $10,000
- MRI after the patient collapses = from a couple of hundred dollars to $1,000
- Multiple (16) splenectomies = $140,000 to $200,000
- treatment for the stroke = $60,000
- drug abuse treatment = $50,000
- ataxia treatment = $40,000
That brings us to a bill of
$298,200, more or less, depending on the deal that your insurance company has with your facility.
Holtz also assured
House fans that while the show tackles illnesses that are so rare they've only been encountered "a handful of times in the entire history of medicine," the amount is pretty realistic: "Spending a few hundred thousand dollars on a complicated case is not at all unusual."
(Image courtesy of FOX)