The High Costs of Emergency Medicine

A couple months ago, I had to take my youngest daughter to the Emergency Department. I picked her and her sister up from the park. She was in a panic because she had pain and a tightness in her chest and was having difficulty breathing. This is not something that could just wait for her primary care physician, so off we went to the ED. As it turns out, she has asthma like her sister and was having an attack. She got a breathing treatment and an inhaler and is now doing much better.

What was the cost for this excursion? I just got the bill yesterday. The grand total was $1417.30. After insurance, my share is only $551.72. I'll just write a check for that and it's over and done with.

Hahahahaha!

Yeah, right. There's no way I have that sort of money just sitting around. Thankfully, I work at the same hospital and it's (relatively) easy for me to just arrange to have payments taken out of my check for the next six months (or whatever) to pay this off.

We talk a lot about the soaring cost of healthcare in the country and there is a push to take more preventative measures to reduce trips to the ED. Sometimes those visits are unavoidable, though, and it will be really important for Congress and the President to ensure that good cost control mechanisms are put in place with Obamacare so that the average person doesn't need to worry about healthcare being unaffordable. Like I said, I'm lucky in that I can make payment arrangements with a minimum of fuss. Most people are not in that situation and it's trivial to find horror stories of people going bankrupt over the cost of healthcare.

The Problem With Getting Sick Is That It's Expensive

In addition to talking to my doc about depression, I also needed to talk to him about the stuffy nose I've had for eight or nine weeks now. It's severity comes and goes, but every day I've had a little bit of congestion. I've never had allergies, but it seems I may possibly could be sort of coming down with 'em. Or it's something else. Hard to say at this point. But he gave me a script for Nasonex. I've never used it before or known anyone who has which made for a wonderful surprise when the pharmacist asked me, "Did your doctor tell you that this costs $108?"

Uhm...WTF? He most certainly did not telling me I would be shelling out triple digits for some stuff to spray up my nose. Is it made out of cocaine or something? Is there any chance I could get instructions off of the GoogleTubes and cook some of this stuff up at home?

So, I shelled out over one-hundred dollars that I do not have for some spray crap that may or may not help. I'm sure it's hard for docs to realize how much money that is for a very poor single dad. It's human nature to slip into thinking that our life is normal and that everyone lives pretty similarly.

Understanding this, though, doesn't make me feel any better about paying $108 for a small bottle of stuff to spray inside my nose. Cocaine is probably cheaper.