You Can't Have Your Piece of The Pie ~ One reason why health insurance is so expensive
Last Tuesday I stepped out my door, walked down my driveway and slipped and fell on a patch of ice on my way to the mailbox. Now I wasn’t laying on the sidewalk thinking “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” It smarted a bit, and I sat there for a minute until the initial pain subsided. Then I got up, finished my walk to the mailbox and went back inside the house. I iced my arm, took some ibuprophen and went to bed. Since I am right handed and that is the side I fell on, life was a little interesting using my left hand for everything since it seems to be retarded and not able to do the tasks I have called upon it to do, but I survived. The next day was a bit better but I still had some pain, mostly muscle soreness in my forearm. I called my doctor to ask if she could prescribe some low level pain killers for a day or two just to get me past the soreness I was experiencing. No, she says, I must make an office visit to her before she can prescribe any meds. The immediate thought that ran through my mind was, damn those drug and Meth dealers have ruined it for every one of us honest folks. I have been a patient of her’s for over ten year and have a proven track record of not abusing meds or anything that would remotely appear to be drug abuse. I opted not to go to her office and waste $150.00 for the office call, only to have her just send me off the x-ray dept at the hospital to have it x-rayed. Instead I asked her to send a request directly to the hospital so that I could have it x-rayed just for good measure after work. Meanwhile a co-worker asked why I just didn’t go over to ER at the hospital?? I gave her the “deer in the headlight” look and said, “ER is for emergencies, if you are dying, or bleeding, or in immediate health danger” I am experiencing none of those situations. Besides, if I go to ER, they are just going to send me over to x-ray and then I will have a bill from ER AND X-Ray. Why would I want to have two bills when I only need one? So I go to the X-ray dept after work and have my x-rays done. He looks them over, even lets me look at them and tells me, “well maam, I’m not a doctor, but I don’t see any broken bones or even any hair line fractures. “ We will send your films and the report back to your doctor for evaluation. The next day I get a phone call from my doctor’s office; she wants me to come in to “feel” my arm after looking at my reports and only has an appointment in the middle of the afternoon so I have to lose time from work. I responded and said, "unless you can see me at 7:30am or after 5pm I’m not coming in, it’s not broken, it’s just sore. If it gets worse I’ll call you."
What occurs to me is if I had played this the way they wanted me to, I would have seen the doctor twice, once before and once after the x-rays, seen maybe someone in ER and the x-ray department. Everyone would have gotten a piece of the pie and THAT is one of the reasons why health care is so expensive!