Cancer patients often charged exorbitant fees for ... parking.

[Diamond_Dog]

This is an outrage! ... talk about kicking you when you’re down. I was lucky, back in ‘07 when I had all my surgeries, treatments, and chemo, I did not have to pay for parking at the cancer center that treated me.

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For cancer patients, the road from diagnosis to survivorship feels like a never-ending parade of medical appointments: surgeries, blood work, chemotherapy, radiation treatments, scans. The routine is time-consuming and costly. So, when hospitals charge patients double-digit parking fees, patients often leave the garage demoralized.

Iram Leon vividly remembers the first time he went for a follow-up MRI appointment at Dell Seton Medical Center in Austin, Texas, after he had been treated at another hospital for a brain tumor.

The medical news was good: His stage 2 tumor was stable. The financial news was not. When he sat down at the receptionist’s desk to check out, Leon was confronted by a bold, red-lettered sign on the back of her computer that read: “WE DO NOT VALIDATE PARKING.”

Below that all-caps statement was a list of parking rates, starting with $2 for a 30-minute visit and maxing out at $28 a day. Lose your ticket? Then you could pay $27 for an hour.

More

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/cancer/cancer-patients-often-charged-exorbitant-fees-parking-n1267471

[JohnSJ]

1. It isn't just cancer patients, this goes on at a lot of places now, and it isn't a good thing

Hotels used to include parking. No more. That adds 20 to 40 dollars a night on to your bill now.

UCSF not only charges patients for parking when visiting the clinic, they charge the employees who work at the clinic for parking too. Same with Stanford and UCLA, and that includes parking charges for someone being brought into the ER also.

It really is sad as the OP has indicated because the are nickel-and-diming people who are in a very stressful situation

and you can extrapolate from the article that this is going on throughout the country

[Hoyt]

2. That's crappy. At least the docs where my Ladyfriend received treatment gave her a parking pass.

[Staph]

3. I guess I'm lucky.

My hospital, here in West Virginia, does not charge for parking. Full stop.

They also have a section set aside strictly for patients of the cancer center. I've really appreciated that when dragging out of the building after a five-hour chemo session.

It's a pretty good cancer - they've kept me around for eight years after my initial diagnosis of stage III endometrial cancer, with two returns.

[RobinA]

4. I Recently Experienced This

I had to go to a big city hospital for a repeat colonoscopy. We went to the parking garage which had a lot of "free for patients" signs scattered about. We go in and come out 4 hours later. 2 of those hours were them being late, which happens. We go to leave, my sister gives him the validated ticket, and he says $10. I told her it was free. Nope, $10. I say, the sign says it's free for patients. Nope, only free for 30 minutes. 30 minutes? What can a patient do at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in 30 minutes???? I wasn't even checked in in 30 minutes. Thanks guys!