I’ve had my own little healthcare adventure.
It’s not so terribly dramatic, given that my health problem was a sinus infection, and I’ve been blessed with a more-or-less iron constitution.
And yet, it makes me wonder what people with less money than I have who also have no insurance do when they have serious, or even just chronic, health issues.
I haven’t had health insurance for a while, but I also haven’t had need of health care. So I haven’t scoped out my possibilities in terms of walk-in clinics and urgent care centers. Oh, there are a lot of places I can go for free or low-cost STD testing, tuberculosis testing, or AIDS testing. But just to get a scrip for antibiotics for a sinus infection?
Well.
After two sweaty, nauseous days on the couch (do you know that even if you block out most of the day for an extended-cut LOTR marathon, it’s still not enough? You need the WHOLE DAY), when I woke up still feeling sweaty and icky this morning, I started casting around for a walk-in clinic that would allow me both a doctor’s visit and a scrip for about $150. Because that’s all I got right now — while I’m a lawyer, I’m the kind that doesn’t make very much money (tried that; would have added an ulcer to the mix). And if I couldn’t get a doctor’s (or nurse practitioner’s) visit for less than, say, $75, I’d figure the visit wasn’t worth it. Because what good is getting told that you have what you already figured out what you have if you can’t then get the medicine you need to fix the problem?
And, well, damned if I couldn’t find a clinic. I called a nurse friend of mine, and while she knew of a clinic on 156th Street, that didn’t help me much since I live in Brooklyn and work on Wall Street. I tried D*O*C*S, but they wanted $175-300, depending on doctor, just for the visit. I think the $65 advertised rate is if you have insurance, because I was quoted the no-insurance rate. I tried the clinics inside Duane Reade, but they start at $95 for no insurance; again, different from the advertised rate, which is obviously with insurance.
So, basically, all outside my budget.
I gave up, and decided to go home. Well, not before heading to Whole Foods for some French baguettes, basil, fresh mozzarella and heirloom tomatoes. Gotta have some compensation for the healthcare system. And I started realizing that I was feeling a lot less feverish overall, and that even sitting up was no longer an ordeal.
It looks like my iron constitution has once again prevailed, but what happens when it no longer does?
What happens? You drink Robitussin out of the bottle and hope to hell it works, and if that fails, you go to the emergency room and get charged five times what it should have cost you in the first place. And then you either pay the bill slowly and take hell from collections agents, or you don’t pay the bill and stop answering your phone for five years.
Glad you’re on the mend.
Ugh. I did without health insurance for quite a while — probably at least five or six years altogether. It sucked ass. If my parents hadn’t been willing to help me out with stuff like my medications, I would have been in major trouble.
I did discover that there’s enough competition here in L.A. that doctors were (somewhat) willing to negotiate, provide free drugs from the cabinet, etc., which I was able to do with a dermatologist in Westwood for a couple of years. (Roseacea = not a pretty sight and potentially scarring.) The urgent care clinic closest to my house gives you a discount if you pay cash. And in California, you can get prescriptions filled at Costco without having to be a member — state law.
Now I’m paying COBRA prices, which sucks, but I should be employer-insured again in October. Fingers crossed.
Oh, and I ended up at the Venice Family Clinic one time when I had to have a tuberculosis test before I started a job but couldn’t find anyone else who could do it at a reasonable price. Wonderful people working there — I need to remember to donate to them again when I’m not paying $300 for COBRA.
Glad you are feeling better! I highly recommend taking guaifenesin (Mucinex) at the first sign of sinus troubles, esp since you can get it OTC now.
I can’t go without health insurance now as I have a inherited disorder that most likely will never be life-threatening, but could get very bad without treatment. During past periods of unemployment, sometimes the COBRA payments went out before the rent.
(yep, this is Deborah from trivia
What do you do when you have a chronic condition and no insurance?
You go without much or all of your care.
I have a condition that counted as a “pre-existing condition” so when I lost my husband’s benefits (and my own company didn’t have benefits to pick up) I was unable to get private insurance at any price.
My condition requires that I take medication, which ran about $300/month. Right before I was about to get cut off of my husband’s bennies, I lied to the doctor and said my symptoms were worsening–he then wrote me a scrip for an increased dosage which I quickly ran over to the pharmacy and had filled for 90 days. I made that last for 200 days.
That was the easy part. Once I ran out of that medication, I had to figure out how to get a refill. You need to see a doctor to get any kind of prescription, so that required a payment for an office visit. My local clinic let me write a check (which bounced). I got a lecture from the doctor telling me that in order to continue to write me scrips for my medication, I would have to have my blood levels monitored and have an MRI done. Ha! Like that would ever happen.
Then I literally filled my prescription two or three pills at a time for $25 a pop. Sometimes I went without.
At the same time as I was trying to do all this, I also had a son who was not covered and I had to manage to get him to the doctor for required things like vaccines (which I probably would have delayed except in order for me to work he has to go to care and if he has to go to care he has to have his shots up to date.)
So in the end while I managed to scrounge my medication, there was no monitoring of my condition which is so very important.
What I ended up doing was switching jobs to get one with an insurance plan. I was lucky I could do that. I have a son with autism so I have a lot of time out of the office and finding a company that was okay with that AND paid a living wage AND provided benefits was pretty tough.
It certainly gave me a ton of perspective. Some days at the office when my coworkers are bitching that they stocked the coffee room with the wrong kind of creamer or that the printer is down again or that so-and-so is driving them crazy… I just grin. I could care less what kind of crap is going on around me at work. I have insurance now and I can put up with A LOT to keep it.
I wonder how much stress over worrying about getting sick while uninsured actually contributes to the uninsured getting sick.
Hon, sorry if I misquoted RE DOCS. Are you sure that’s the walk-in clinic rate? Jeez, they sure went up.
I have a pre-existing condition which means I must ALWAYS have insurance or I’m in deep shit. When I was freelancing, this meant sometimes paring down my grocery bill in NYC to $15/week max to pay for my $400/month crappy freelancer deal.
Now, thank G-d, I work for a huge multinational and have kickass, better-than-Hollywood-stars health coverage. Which I need.
Zuzu, go get those antibiotics. See if there is a RapidCare or other “doc in a box” clinic and go get a fucking Z-pac of Zithromax for your sinuses already before you blow out an eardrum….
I think continuing to flush your sinuses will clear it up. The last time I had a sinus infection, I had been using a neti pot — I upgraded to an actual irrigation system [neti pot on crack] and it cleared it up almost within a day. I use it almost daily now and swear by it. I truly dislike antibiotics and the candy store-like way in which they’re dispensed.
[The irrigation systems works great on colds, too.]
As far as health insurance, I’m damn lucky I have it. I’ll never understand why those who have no insurance and who would be most unable to afford healthcare are the ones who are charged even more for services. It’s a sick system.
Yeah, I lost my health insurance (no longer a full-time student) when I was on Zoloft, which was about $100/month. Unfortunately, I wasn’t making enough money to pay for that (as well as rent and car payments), and my parents were still struggling with the medical bills from my father having had cancer, so I felt guilty asking them for money.
Cold turkey is about the worst way to get off Zoloft, ever. (Yes, I knew I could probably afford enough pills to taper gracefully, but I’d remind you that I wasn’t quite thinking straight because I was running out of happy pills.)
Hello, single-payer health insurance and mental health parity.
I’m again without insurance, and I need my wisdom teeth out. Pleasant, huh?
Doing without insurance - *shudders* I have done it in the past when my health was generally good. Now I have not one, not two, but three pre-existing conditions. I don’t dare be without insurance. Not for anything, or I might as well start pre-purchasing the cemetary plot.
Usually there are clinics around who will take you on a sliding scale if you are without insurance. It was the only way I was able to get any sort of care (including my yearly paps) when I was uninsured.
I’ve actually heard of people going to aquarium stores and buying fish antibiotics (many of which are identical to the ones produced for humans, just different dosages) when they were really desperate. But if it’s getting better on its own, you might not need them. I personally prefer to save antibiotics for a raging infection that’s getting progressively worse and could spill over into septicemia if untreated (e.g. a tooth abscess).
But your basic point, which is that it shouldn’t cost anyone an arm and a fricking leg for a basic doctor visit, is right awwwn. I’m sure yours is one of the cases right-wingers love to point to when they mention the “people making over $75K a year who choose not to buy health insurance,” not realizing that $75K a year in New York is barely a subsistence living.
I could care less what kind of crap is going on around me at work. I have insurance now and I can put up with A LOT to keep it.
Yep, but you shouldn’t have to. No other industrialized country’s citizens have to. I swear, I don’t understand why we don’t have riots in the streets demanding universal health care–it’s not like anyone from the health insurance industry or big pharma is cute and cuddly or anything.
I agree.
But this is the thing. When I was uninsured the stock answer to my dilemma was, “apply for FAMIS” (FAMIS being the mother/child state-funded program in our state). I made just enough money not to qualify and even if I did, it covered only my son and not me.
The lady at FAMIS even advised me to quit my job. If I did that, she said, I would qualify.
Of course, I’d lose my house but my kids would be covered. Not exactly a win-win situation. I kept the job.
I literally just now got back from the doctor with my older son. He got a concussion on Sunday and was having some difficulty and needed to be seen at the walk-in clinic. We had to wait at the front desk until someone in billing took “the block” off our account and we could be seen.
Even with insurance, I owe the doctor $340 in deductibles and copays.
But at least I have insurance.
But you are right, we should all have insurance. No one should have to worry about this stuff.
I literally just now got back from the doctor with my older son. He got a concussion on Sunday and was having some difficulty and needed to be seen at the walk-in clinic.
What happened?
Oh, just read your blog — surfboards.
Vacation fun? ;P
Him getting hit on the head with a surfboard happened after we got home from vacation. And was still a better day than the best day on vacation