Surgery in San Francisco... on the cheap??

Did you or anyone else see the ticket that said "SFO"? Otherwise the only way he can do all this for that price is have surgery in MX.....

The last time I saw someone post about their surgery from Cali and they lived in the San Fran area, it was $80,000 (billed to insurance), basically double what it costs in the midwest.

My VSG surgery was probably 80k total, at Elmhurst Hospital near Chicago. So, the Midwest definitely isn't cheap depending on where you are.

Mine was 40K is in STL.

Insurance only paid 11K though, so it is all just an artificial racket but that is a different convo.

I wouldn't be surprised it is was 125K at Univ of Chicago, their prices are ridic.

It sounds like someone is spending a week-long vacation in SF rather than getting surgery. >.>

Kidding aside, that is not remotely possible, unless it was Orbera. Even the Aspire Assist or whatever it is costs more. And Orbera is done far closer than SF.

Teaching hospitals don't have discounts. They do have fewer complications though, depending, because multiple physicians are working on tasks normally half would. In general, for major surgery, they aren't a bad option. However, no teaching hospitals charge 6k for the VSG in the united states that I am aware of. Even a lap band is far more than 6k, because just the fees to use an emergency room are usually 4-6k, forget the surgeon's fee and everything else.

Sounds odd unless the 6k is an insurance deductible, which it may very well be. In that case, it makes sense.

Occasionally we see cut rates for practices that need to build their numbers to gain their CoE certification, but they usually aren't that low. They tend not be be heavily advertised but more of a word of mouth type of thing. One of the big SF practices did have a special a few years ago that was pretty friendly but not that cheap (though IIRC they were targeting DS prospects so it was still a substantial cut from the normal self-pay $30k rates of the time.

One can't go by they rack rates charged to insurance as a comparison as those are heavily inflated for a variety of reasons, but US self pay rates are a good measure. We do see VSG self pay rates around $11k from some practice in Las Vegas, and $17k seems fairly common from some of the SF practices.

Likewise, I tend to agree that this likely is a Mx job washed through a SF trip to hide it from family - look at the family resistance some talk about on the Mx boards.

If someone is having surgery in Tijuana, Mexico they fly into San Diego and then a driver from their surgeon's office picks them up at the airport. The other 2 less common options are to take the train to San Diego and the driver will pick you up there or drive to the long term parking lot at the border and get picked up there.

So your friend's nephew may have flown from OKC to San Francisco (SFO) and then caught a connecting flight to San Diego (SAN) or flown directly to San Diego (SAN).

I don't think you can walk into a SF emergency room for that little. I had my DS at a teaching hospital and had many poking and prodding me, student surgeons, residents, even student nurses! All this was at no discount to me. I, too, am thinking Mexico, for surgery there really is that cheap, or he's getting something entirely experimental, which IMO, shouldn't cost a thing.

Teaching hospitals are awesome but I'm with everyone else thinking that's just not possible for the price.

Being shady with the family is one thing - because come on, we all know that some people just like to be negative about the surgery so I get why sometimes not telling people about it is the way to go. But everything else seems off.