Quote:

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Timber rattlesnakes tend to be "more docile" than other rattler species and is likely to stay coiled or stretched out and motionless when encountered in the wild, according to the Smithsonian National Zoo.

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That Timber didn't get the memo.

ID please. In the Austin area. Buddy just sent it to me

Hognose?

Eastern hognose

From my brother's house in south College Station. His cat presumably killed it then brought it into the yard

And I just remembered I promised an update on the going rate of antivenom in Colorado....somehow that rattlesnake managed to bite me in the wallet as well..

Nah bro, I just want the sterile med surgery supplies.

HuttoAg27 said:

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Does Insurance cover that?

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That's what we understand, seems we have successfully met our deductible this year.....

You can find bills of close to 200,000 dollars for antivenom, but the hospital actually gets reimbursed at about 2,000 per vial by Medicare who states they will only pay a percentage of the cost billed... so the hospitals play a game where they hyperinflate the price to try to make any profit at all off the vials and the patients see the bill and think the hospital actually expects them to pay that amount. (They don't) if you call the hospital billing department and offer to pay out of pocket you will see the price drop precipitously.

Around 65% of the people who are admitted to hospitals never end up paying the hospital anything. And almost 90% dont end up paying enough to cover their costs to the hospital. The other 10% (sometimes up to 20%) of people pay the tab for everyone there.

Hospitals operate on a shoestring budget. They dont really get rich mostly due to insane overhead with inflated pharmaceutical prices and medical equipment prices as well as paying staff. Any money they do make goes directly to private equity groups and not back to the providers. However insurance companies are absolutely killing it with insane profit margins in the multi billions... same with the pharma industry.

Too much of the public ire is directed at Hospitals and doctors. The evil people in this equation are the insurance companies and private equity buying up hospitals and physician groups and pulling highly trained medical professionals out of the equation for the budget providers (NPs and PAs) at all levels of healthcare even when the NPs and PAs are performing procedures and other aspects of patient care which they openly admit feeling uncomfortable and undertrained to provide.

Healthcare like much of our current society is very very broken.... but snakes are cool and so is this guy.

Badace52 said:

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Healthcare like much of our current society is very very broken.... but snakes are cool and so is this guy.

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Excellent segue!