Despite a lifelong struggle with panic attacks, Divya Singh made a brave move across the world last fall from her home in Mumbai, India. She enrolled at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., to study physics and explore an interest in stand-up comedy in Manhattan.
Arriving in the midst of the pandemic and isolated in her dorm room, Singh’s anxiety ballooned when her family had trouble coming up with the money for a $16,000 tuition installment. Hofstra warned her she would have to vacate the dorm after the term ended if she was not paid up. At one point, she ran into obstacles transferring money onto her campus meal card.
“I’m a literally broke college student that didn’t have money for food,” she recalls. “At that moment of panic, I didn’t want to do anything or leave my bed.”
In late October, she called the campus counseling center hotline and met with a psychologist. “All I wanted was someone to listen to me and validate the fact that I wasn’t going crazy,” Singh says.
Instead, when she mentioned suicidal thoughts, the psychologist insisted on a psychiatric evaluation. Singh was taken by ambulance to Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, N.Y., and kept for a week on a psychiatric ward at nearby Zucker Hillside Hospital. Both institutions are part of the Northwell Health system.
The experience — lots of time alone and a few therapy sessions — was of minimal benefit psychologically, Singh says. She emerged facing the same tuition debt as before.
And then another bill came.
The Patient: Divya Singh, a 20-year-old student at Hofstra University.
Medical Service: Seven-day inpatient psychiatric stay at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, N.Y.
Service Provider: Northwell Health, a large nonprofit hospital system in New York City and Long Island.
Total Bill: Northwell charged $50,282, which Singh’s insurer, Aetna, reduced to $17,066 under its contract with Northwell. The plan required Singh to pay $3,413.20 of that.
