If you do the math, as I have, my first surgery was over $125,000, for a 4x by-pass, just for the hospital…it did not include all the doctors, nor the follow-up visits, medications, etc. I had a second incident, I spent a week in the hospital…never saw that bill, but have now had a third incident…the bill submitted was over $75,000 for a stent, again, just the hospital bill. Adding that up…just the 2 hospitals…its over $200,000.
Of the 57,000 + plaintiffs, about (estimated) 30,000 people should have had MI(s) and the costs being around $200,000 each. 30,000 at $200,000 is $6 billion.
The first thing to consider, pursuant to the agreement, $850,000 is for people who suffered strokes, that automatically leaves $4 billion. This is just off the top of my head estimation, but looks to me that Merck would save over $2 billion just on hospitalizations.
The above numbers don’t include any additional medical expenses such as doctors, medications, other health care providers, etc. How many additional billions would Merck be liable for?
It has been estimated that the entire liability to Merck should be around $25-$30 billion.
With this $4 billion offer of settlement, Merck puts any additional burden on the plaintiffs, State and Federal Governments, private insurance companies, as well as the public.
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Tags: attorneys, lawsuits, lawyer, math, Merck, settlement, vioxx
January 21, 2008 at 10:56 pm
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