I'm sitting in a waiting room on the 10th floor at UC San Francisco as I write this. My eldest son (age 22, senior in college) went to a New Years Eve party, and apparently took a pill he shouldn't have. Was at death's door for several days, transferred on an emergency basis to UCSF, woke up (sort of) on the fifth day, is now slowly getting better, thought still in very bad shape. I've been living in this waiting room, and a nearby hospice, since it began, and haven't been outside the hospital during waking hours.

More on that later, maybe. Talked to my wife about our insurance, we've got very good insurance, at least on paper. Deductible in the low four digits, which is down in the noise, then they pay 90% of the rest, which is a lot higher than most companies pay. That's on paper, of course, they may disallow some claims, rough guess they may pay 70-80 percent of balance after all is said and done.

Rough schedule looks like maybe 3-4 weeks total in ICU (Intensive Care Unit, where he's been since this started), then (at a wild guess) 3 weeks on a regular hospital floor, then maybe 1 to 3 months of rehab and physical therapy. Plus dialysis for X months or years, plus months of neurological exams, plus X. Hopefully will make a full recovery, though we don't know yet.

No, I'm not kidding.

My question is, what's a rough guess of what this whole thing will cost? Anyone know? Talked to my wife last night, who is very practical, and it was the first time I've started thinking about costs or insurance. I'll be talking to Hospital Accounting and the insurance (Aetna) folks soon enough, but now I'd just like some very rough guesses, if anyone has a crystal ball handy.

My wife and I picked a figure of $1 to $2 million out of the air, on very little basis other than "I heard somewhere that it might...". If insurance pays, say, 75% after all is said and done, then we're looking at a debt of up to half a million AFTER insurance has paid off.

Basically our retirement is gone, or our house is gone, or maybe both if my SWAGs above are off, which they probably are.

Anybody had any experience with this? Want to toss some guesses into the hopper?

P.S. Obamacare still sucks, if that had been in force for the last 20 years the ECMO machine that saved my son's life in the first three days when nothing else could probably wouldn't have been invented, "too expensive and speculative, doesn't benefit enough people".