Absolutely fucking OUTRAGEOUS!

Regular readers will remember that about two weeks ago I was forced to go to the emergency room with a case of strep throat.

I got the bill today.

To say that I am absolutely fucking livid would be a major understatement. This thing isn’t a bill for services rendered, it’s basically a notice from a business that they’re going to fuck me in that ass me just because they can.

In all seriousness I’m surprised there isn’t a note at the bottom that says “Ha! We know that you’ve got no choice and have to come to us when you’re sick, so we’re totally just going to bend you over and rape your cornhole because we like money. Hope you get sick again soon, sucker!”

Ok, just to start let me tell you exactly what happened when I went to the ER.

I arrived and signed in. After almost two hours in the waiting room I was taken to triage where a nurse swabbed my throat before sending me back to the waiting room for another hour.

Then I was taken to a small room where I stay for a further hour until the doctor showed up, shone a light down my throat, told me my throat looked ‘more yeasty than streppy’ (direct quote) and left.

Ten minutes later a male nurse turned up and gave me a single pill with some water to wash it down with. 20 minutes after that another nurse turned up, and gave me a prescription for 4 more of the pills and told me I could leave.

For future reference, those four pills cost $10 at the pharmacy. $2.50 a pop, remember that.

So, long story short, my visit to the ER was a throat swab, a ten dollar pill and a grand total of a minute and a half of face time with the doctor.

Know what that cost me?

$836.09. That’s not a typo. I’ve not put the decimal point in the wrong place. Eight hundred and thirty six dollars.

It’s just fucking wrong.

The itemized bill had me absolutely fuming. Here it is:

Laboratory : $161

Ok, I have no idea what equipment and disposables they have to use to run tests on the throat swab, so even though I think this is outrageously high, I can’t really comment…except to say that back in England the whole thing would be free anyway.

Emergency Room : $464.00

Unless they were charging me to sit in the waiting room, this means I was charged nearly five hundred dollars to sit alone in an examination room for an hour. If it means time spent with the doctor, that’s $464 for two minutes.

Apparently that Doctor’s time is worth $13,020 an hour.

Self Administered drugs : $211

This is the one that really got me pissed off. Considering these pills cost $2.50 a pop from the pharmacy, getting charged two hundred and eleven dollars for a single pill is just fucking ludicrous.

Basically, that pill cost me 84 times it’s ‘retail price’ simply because an effeminate dude in scrubs brought it to me in a little plastic cup.

I said it as a joke in a previous post but it actually turned out to be true. I could literally have got on a plane, flown back to England, seen my regular doctor and flown back to the US for less than it cost me to visit that Emergency room.

Now, I have to ask a question.

Why isn’t this a much bigger deal in America? All of Canada and Europe has totally free health care. The American health care system doesn’t just charge for its services, the American health care establishment just literally pulls prices out of its ass because they know if you get sick you’ve got no choice. It’s a seller’s market.

I’m sorry, but there’s just no way to rationalize or even justify these costs. $464 to sit in a room for an hour and spend 20 minutes with a doctor? $211 for a single $2.50 pill?

When it costs close to a thousand dollars for a single pill and two minutes with a doctor something it very, very wrong.

That’s not just expensive. That’s not just outrageous. That’s just downright criminal.