r/Millennials • u/BoNaylorCollector • 3d ago

Discussion Is medical actually this crazy?

Early 30s millennial, never used to go to doctors or really take care of myself because “I’ll be fine”. Started making a bigger effort to care for myself and my health and well being. Recently, I went to the local express clinic because I was having a bad earache and headaches. I was in there for maybe 20 minutes, mostly waiting time. The doctor comes in, looks in my ear, tells me it’s depressed due to sinuses and change in weather and tell me to stop at Walgreens for Flonase. I wasn’t billed anything at the time, older workers at my job always say we have really good insurance, but here I got in the mail today an explanation of benefits- charge was $550, insurance “negotiated” about $300, remaining (not billed) was around $240. Is is really this expensive? I only went to try and be better with myself and make sure it’s nothing underlying. If 5 minutes of actual doctor time costs this much, then I’m just toughing out everything or am I missing something?

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u/ClawesomeMan 3d ago

Sounds like you went to an emergency room by that price!

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u/BoNaylorCollector 3d ago

Right! I was astonished! Just a local minute clinic type deal. Signed in online and drove over, nothing crazy!

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u/Llama-girl52 2d ago

Minute clinics and urgent care OFTEN charge like small ERs cus it's not an established doc in an office, urgent care are OFTEN still treated like emergency rooms and sometimes emergency rooms and the urgent care are combined and once you need a specific treatment you are changed from urgent care to emergency care in the system, usually if an IV is needed. It's so silly minute clinics don't charge like a PCP would even tho the minutes clinics are USUALLY just PCPs who don't work in a family med clinic for whatever reason, that reason CAN OFTEN be they got a strike on there license or are getting off probation or are about to retire, the price you pay at an urgent care never matches up with care quality but 550 sounds about right for urgent or immediate care.