Parents Hit with Nearly $300,000 Bill After Their 2-Year-Old Needed Antivenom for a Snake Bite

Mar. 15, 2025

Stock image of a rattlesnake.Photo:Getty

Getty

Brigland Pfeffer was playing with his siblings in their San Diego backyard when he ran up to his mother, Lindsay, to show heran injuryon his right hand.

Stock image of a rattlesnake.CARL DE SOUZA/AFP/Getty

CARL DE SOUZA/AFP/Getty

By the time the family arrived to Palomar Medical Center Escondido via ambulance, the two-year-old’s hand was swollen and purple. When attempts to deliver antivenom intravenously failed, Brigland was given the antivenom Anavip, administered directly into his blood marrow, as the swelling spread to his armpit.

Brigland was then transferred to the pediatric intensive care unit at Rady Children’s Hospital, where he received more antivenom treatment over the next few days.

The total bill: $297,461 — with antivenom costs accounting for $213,278.80 of the bill.

Brigland received 20 vials of Anavip — $5,876.64 per vial — at Rady Children’s. Ten vials at Palomar were $9,574.60 per vial. However, Stacie Dusetzina, a professor of health policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told the outlet that Medicare and most hospitals pay $2,000 for each unit of the medication.

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Stock image of snake venom being collected into a syringe.NIKLAS HALLE’N/AFP via Getty

NIKLAS HALLE’N/AFP via Getty

“When you see the word ‘charges,’ that’s a made-up number. That isn’t connected at all, usually, to what the actual drug cost,” Dusetzina told the publication.

AsSmithsonianreported, antivenom can be complicated to produce, as a donor animal must be injected with the venom — and then their antibodies harvested to make the treatment. (In the case ofAnavip, the donor animal is a horse.)

But still,Smithsonianreported, up to 70% of the cost is  “due to hospital markups used in negotiations with insurance companies.”

The Pfeffers’ insurance company was able to negotiate the cost down but the final amount is not known.

Brigand has been left with scar tissue and nerve damage on his right hand from the snake bite, and is now left-handed.

Stock image of venom being extracted from a snake.Getty

“He’s very, very lucky,” says his mom Lindsay, who adds that the family has installed fencing specifically designed to keep snakes out around their property.

“At Palomar Health, every snakebite patient receives the highest standard of care, which includes the expertise of Dr. Roy Johnson, one of the nation’s leading family care physicians and herpetologists, who has treated over 1,000 snakebites in his career and 28 snakebites in this year alone, and that experience is what would save any child’s life from dying or suffering any long-term consequences.”

PEOPLE has reached out to Rady Children’s Hospital for comment.

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source: people.com