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Tuesday, April 11, 2017

To the Hospital



Last Saturday, after a sleepless night due to leg pain, I asked my lovely wife to take me to the hospital. While I thought my leg was slowly healing, it was taking longer than it should. Going the the hospital is a big deal for me. First of all, I hate to go there. Sometimes once you get into the system they never want to let you go. There's some bad history between the medical profession and myself.

The second major consideration is the fact that I don't have medical insurance. When I told the emergency room receptionist she didn't even blink an eye. She just made a note of it and handed me a large booklet explaining their assistance programs.

Fortunately, the ER doctor on duty was one of the few I respected. Long story short, after an exam, some x-rays and new bandage, they let me go. The doctor wrote a script for antibiotics. It cost $19 for the antibiotics and a new bottle of acetaminophen. The antibiotics are really speeding up the healing process. Seems like it's worth it.

Now all I have to do is wait for the bills to come in. Of course, when I had medical insurance there was a $6000 deductible, so that wouldn't have helped me. Add to that the couple of thousand of dollars I didn't spend on insurance and I'll be ahead of the game. Anybody in other civilized countries would have gone to the hospital a month ago. Only in the United States do we put off medial treatments.

My insurance would not cover me outside of my state. That means for up to half the year my insurance would do me no good at all. We really have the worse of all systems -if you aren't rich, that is.

My parents had what was considered good medical insurance. In spite of that, when my mother came down with cancer, uncovered expenses bankrupted them. Years later when my dad passed away from cancer, he died broke. In fact, it cost me some money to give him a proper burial.

Personally, I'm not afraid of bankruptcy. Yeah, my credit rating would be shredded, but credit is only necessary if you need to buy stuff. I'm pretty good at living a minimalist life.

I'm glad I'm getting better as we've are finally getting some decent weather. It's actually hit 70 degrees the last couple of days. The snow pack is finally melting. In a few days I should be able to get my van out of the ice.

-Sixbears

15 comments:

  1. I have found out that a person can't afford to get sick or hurt.

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  2. Glad the doc released you. They get really angry when you escape on your own!

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    1. I know. Years ago I was ready to leave the hospital but the doctor who needed to sign me out "could not be found." He wanted me to spend one more night in the hospital. I told them I was leaving and they could get the papers together. My wife told them I was not kidding. Suddenly, the doctor was found and he grumpily signed me out.

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  3. Medical care has always been expensive. A great-uncle had to mortgage the farm to pay for my great-aunt's appendix surgery back in the 1920s. Come to think of it, my grandfather and his siblings had to mortgage the farm to bury their mother, same time-frame, but they weren't as lucky and lost it.

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    1. What a mess. There are better ways. When hospitals have more people to move paper around than to treat people, things are seriously out of balance.

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  4. So good to hear you escaped and are feeling better.

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    1. Hope the antibiotics do the job. Thanks Janet.

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  5. Would you rather save money by being dead?

    Wildflower

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    1. Wildflower, you have a wonderful way of cutting to the heart of things.

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  6. Glad to hear you are on the mend - hope that continues. The hard part is deciding is the trip to the E.R. worth it. Its taking my wife and I some time to whittle down some E.R. bills from LAST (2016) summer, we are paying $200 a month and are nearly done. Be glad that monkey is off our back.

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    1. Glad you can see the end of it. I'll work something out that I can live with.

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  7. Glad to hear you are on the mend. Hopefully the ER bill won't be too high. All you have to do is send them something (maybe $20 +) every month and they will not be able to do anything about it. My granddaughter is 6 years old and my daughter has just finished paying the hospital.

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    1. If the bill isn't too high I'll dip into my savings. However, if it's huge they can expect a trickle over a long period of time. They'll have to keep me alive to get their money back.

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  8. Why didn't ya just get out the fish antibiotics ?

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    1. Thought about it, but not sure if I had other complications so didn't want to mess with it anymore.

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