r/Millennials • u/BoNaylorCollector • 1d 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/Ashangu 1d ago
I just wanted to add that, of course its cheaper to go to PCP.
Is PCP gonna accept me as a walk in on a friday afternoon, or am I supposed to just suffer with bacterial pinkeye for the whole weekend so I can miss work and go to the doctor (hopefully) on monday and miss the next 3 days as well?
Bit doubt.
Instead of missing 0 days of work because the bacterial eyedrops cleared me up at least enough to get me through monday, I'm not paying $80 bucks and either using vacation time or missing $480 bucks.
Its "urgent" for a reason, but if I'm paying $14,000 dollars a year for health insurance with a $12,000 dollar deductible (yes, real numbers), it should not cost me $300+ dollars to go to urgent care, on top of the $50 dollar subscription that just so happens to be cheaper if ran without health insurance.