One thing that’s recently come to clarity for me is how expensive healthcare in the US is. It’s *absurd*. When I got my knee surgery, the “facility fee” for one hour in the OR was $15,000. One hour.
A few weeks ago, I had to go to the ER because of asthmatic bronchitis, where I was given a nebulizer, and an inhaler, which totally, utterly *failed* to address the problem I was having. That cost $1,440 pre-insurance. The second trip, to address the problem that the first person failed to address, will likely cost as much.
The problem with this is that the second trip, I waited until the last possible moment to go back to the ER, simply becuase I knew the trip would be expensive, and I likely would really have to stretch the budget to be able to afford it, the repairs on the house, and the other recent, huge expenses that have arisen out of a variety of bizarre crap.
For me, it was a persistent cough, that fortunately, turned out to be relatively easily diagnosed, and fixed. If I had a cough, due to something far more serious, that time waiting could have been the difference between life and death.
The notion that in this country, we have to constantly weigh our health against our budget, and that someone as reasonably well-off as I would have to seriously weigh my health against the money I had available is really quite disconcerting, and scary. This is the fucking United States – we’re the richest country in the world. This is *inexcusable*.
I think the other thing is that we need to have better availability of general practitioners. It seems like everytime I want to see a doctor, it takes weeks to get an appointment, and the only way to see someone is to schedule an emergency appointment, which ends up costing more. That doesn’t seem like the right way for things to happen.
And to make it worse, when Jeanne were in Costa Rica, Jeanne got an ear infection (too much body surfing). We went to the 24-hour medical clinic in downtown San Jose, paid $15, waited 10 minutes, and saw a real doctor, who spoke English very well, conducted a full history, wrote the necessary prescriptions, and had us out of there and happy within 30 minutes, with 3 (or 4) different medicines, and clear instructions on how to use them. The pharmacists were very helpful, also, charged us a total of $15, I think, and spoke English, too. Oh, yeah, and this all happened betweem 8 and 9pm. We were very pleasantly surprised, and also a bit embarassed that if a vacationing Costa Rican were faced with the same problem in the States, they would be screwed.
Wow. That’s insane. I wonder if it would have been cheaper for me to get a plane ticket to Costa Rica, get the diagnosis/medicine, and fly back to the States. Now that would be really, genuinely embarassing.
In Nepal I could buy almost any perscription drug from a corner chemist. That did include some pretty heavy duty pain killers, but more importantly, some drugs that kill intestinal parasites. The hospitals were also clean, but I don’t know if the needles were sterilized, and cheap. Three hours, a bag of IV fluid, one questionable needle, all for less than $20.
Here here to the post. And the comments. I have nothing useful to add but anger and agreement.
Regarding Costa Rica, there’s a burgeoning industry of “health/medical tourism” where people will go to Countries such as Costa Rica or Thailand, where there are excellent doctors (many US-trained), and the cost of procedures is much cheaper than that in the US and get a vacation out of it. Read this