I am not sure who is responsible, but someone broke the way the medical field is supposed to work. I would never blame the doctors themselves, I know they don't give a shit about the politics behind how it works. They are pushed past anyone's normal breaking point, learning to function on two or three hours sleep, pretty much exist for the work they do, and for that they should be paid handsomely by us goobers who might, in some instances even die without their expertise. But I think there are too many hands in the cookie jar trying to get fat off their services.
Last year, when I was going through my leg cut, luckily, I did not need medicines, well initially I was given a couple of antibiotic sessions just in case, and I understand that part. You go pay the drugstore a co-payment based on your insurance. That part makes sense. I also had to pay the doctor himself a co-payment, which because he was a "specialist" in wound care meant I had to pay the $50 charge instead of the $25 charge every time. It sucked because initially I was going twice a week, the receptionist was very nice telling me not to worry about it, they would bill me. Well, two visits a week times four a month and there was an easy $400 a month out of my pocket, apart from what they were taking from the insurance. That was still ok, the weird bill started coming later, from the St. David's facility, I guess for enjoying their parking and A/C, they were sending me a separate bill in the order of about three hundred or more a month. This one, I never understood. All I got from the visits were a little gauze and ten-fifteen minutes of attention from one of the nurses, but what can you do.
Fast forward to Boy's Typhus episode. We went to the minute clinic, luckily it was closed, so that saved me at least fifty bucks. We then headed to the Austin Regional Clinic, ARC, and the doctor looked at him, tapped him on the back, concluded it might be meningitis which is serious enough to go directly to emergency room after hearing all his ailments. I kind of had to say I agreed with what the doctor said and it did scare me, so off we went. At the emergency room, a different doctor said we might as well look for tumors in the brain, to rule out they aren't causing the headaches. His fever was on again, off again, so there wasn't much else to go on why he kept getting headaches. I was 100% sure this was all from him staying up until 2-3am every night playing video games then getting up to go to work by 7am. The night in the emergency room yielded nothing. There was the cat scan for tumors and there was a meningitis test, which left his back sore and stiff for a whole extra week. I understand we used the facilities for one night, but they didn't discover anything new, we were still left wondering but that was enough for us to get a $3168.91 payment from the hospital? I thought it was for the two procedures, but we then got a decent bill of like $49 for the meningitis test and a $75 charge for the cat scan test, and even another $48 charge from a lab looking at the blood work. Did the hospital then charge us $3168.91 for the sheets and bed he laid on for 6-8 hours?
Wife took him back to the ARC and a different, older doctor saw him and recognized the symptoms, he had seen it one other time, and gave him the start of the proper antibiotics. It still took him like two weeks and a few checks on his liver before he got back to 100%. For this, they (ARC) is charging us $700-$900, I don't know exactly as we have sent a couple payments as they come in. I don't mind paying these guys this amount, they actually figured out a problem and fixed it. How about the emergency room which didn't do much, honestly, but is charging almost 4 times what the guys who did the fixing? Are they due $3168.91 plus all the separate tests? I've paid all the small bills, and this week I intend to pay most of the ARC bill, but as far as the E/R, I am having trouble swallowing that one. I will pay it as I paid all my leg visit charges, but dammit, there is some raping of charges going on here.
Maybe Wife's insurance is just being slow and hasn't taken their cut, the bill doesn't show any hint of subtractions from insurance sources, so it may not be that bad, just others in the "medical's paper field" dragging their asses. We moved the boys to Wife's shittier but cheaper insurance because they had been like Tonka trucks, Boy especially never gets sick, but now he is exposed again, he is back on the dating scene, which is good but ughhh. Why does everything end up costing me money?
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