Heh, funny they brought up the rabies vaccine anecdote. I was jogging and had a bat fly into my eye one night. This was during a period in my early 20's when I

Heh, funny they brought up the rabies vaccine anecdote. I was jogging and had a bat fly into my eye one night. This was during a period in my early 20's when I didn't have health insurance. My bill was around $14k for the immunoglobulin and vaccine series. I paid somewhere around $2k out of pocket for ER fees. There was a program through Sanofi Pasteur and the CDC to pay for it for people under a certain income threshold. Seems it's bad press if Americans catch symptoms of rabies and die, since prevention is straightforward... and it is such a deadly disease. The kicker was, around a year after this... the hospital reported me to collections for nonpayment of the full amount. I begged the guy that I submitted the application to, to provide me with a record of being covered under this program. Thankfully he violated HIPAA law and did it. Provided me with a complete report of everyone paid under the program that month. The hospital's response was to tell me to immediately destroy the document, citing privacy law, and to tell them where I got it from. I explained that I would not be doing that, and that I would go public with the situation to as many sources as possible. The next day the hospital had a meeting with their vice president and the head of their pharmacy department. Within the week, I had collections removed from my credit reports.