It's amazing what a person can do when $6000 suddenly appears. For year after year after year when we shouldve been getting a financial break after christmas and taxes, we're hit with, dun-dun-dun... Our deductable. $6000 straight out of our pockets + co-insurance+ the $500 or so monthly to keep insured. Instead this year, that bill can wait. My life can't be postponed anymore trying to keep up, so with a little cost shifting, allowing which ever agency to hold the bill and possibly negotiating a payment plan at 0 percent, I'm on vacation, and we haven't racked up anything near $6000.    When I was in charge of my health care bills, before it almost sent me over the edge, I told the hospital and clinic I would pay them $20 monthly each for the rest of my long healthy life. Well, bills were still enough to make me question my sanity so I let Aunt B, a professional, and my husband, who likes to pay medical debt off, in charge. I try not to even open the bills anymore. My last reminder of my status was an inapropriate nurse trying to discharge me, who upon my debate, stated, "well, your insurance company hasn't paid anything this month, I'm just saying." I caved, but how dare she throw my conscientious patient behavior in my face when she wants me off her books even though my MD, social worker, insurance co., and her agency had agreed to this new trial type of palliative care, whereby a chronically ill cancer patient who still wants to receive chemo can also receive hospice-like treatments, such as IV hydration.   My whole life, my treatments, are a trial,  And guess who could have used IV hydration the week before vaca? The week after I'd been discharged by a woman who was "doing nothing for me.".            Yes, that'd be me. I started with pneumonia. I was given big gun doses of levaquin, inhalers, steroids so I could enjoy myself, but I would have been healthier with that hydration. So with flight, hotel, car, 7 day tickets, meals and souveniers we still haven't hit that $6000 mark.  We're no where near the $1842 nightly DHMC charges just for the room. Imagine the vacation we could have for that. Reminds me of a woman I met on my husband who boasted proudly that she's chosen to take an adventure cruise instead of holing herself up in a nursing home by comparing cost and amnenities. She found. That thecruise provided three great meals, activities, bingo included, housekeeping, entertainment and an on-site nurses to assist with meds and doctors to prescribe then. Who knows, but maybe I'll look into it