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A few months after moving to our mountain retreat I got bit by a tiny deer tick while working to clear the neglected garden for planting. Soon I had fever and swollen glands, seriously painful joints and a nasty rash surrounding the bite site. After a few weeks of this we finally got a little ahead on basics, so I went to the local doctor. He has a little clinic next to the grocery store, comes to town twice a week.
First thing was to check in and lay $60 on the counter up front before the doctor would see me, given that I had no insurance. If I’d had insurance, it would have been $10. Then the assistant took my vitals and I was asked to wait in an overcrowded room with a lot of obese locals and their obese children. I guessed immediately that the primary cause of illness in this rural area had to do with America’s basic poor-person bad diet. But that wasn’t my problem…
$150 worth of in-office blood tests and a ‘scrip for a week’s worth of antibiotic later (plus the original $60 just to see him), I found out I’d contracted Lyme disease. He made another appointment for his next in-town day, said he’d give me another week’s worth of antibiotics every week until I was cured. Ha!
So I went home, opened up my handy-dandy Merck Manual, and looked up Lyme. Treatment was 3-6 months’ worth of constant antibiotics. Quickly adding up the doctor’s plan for $60 a week just to get the prescription for antibiotics I could barely afford told me I was much better off just getting the antibiotics and skipping Doctor McGreedy. Because we had quite a bit of experience dealing with our pets’ health issues, I knew I could purchase a full three-month’s supply of the very same antibiotic he prescribed from a veterinary supply firm, for less than the cost of just one more unnecessary visit to his sometime clinic. So I did.
Merck gave the dose too, and luckily the vet tablets were at the right dosage. I found that they dissolved too quickly and upset my stomach, so purchased some gelatin capsules to encase them. Sure, the medicine is generic, but it’s the very same antibiotic that humans use, in just the right dose, for not very much and without having to go to the doctor once a week to get the prescription. It worked just fine, so I’ll thank that doctor for the diagnosis and not for his greedy abuse of uninsured patients.
CNN has some good generic advice for people with high blood pressure who can’t afford the high costs of “New and Improved!” brand-name drugs. I predict we’ll see a lot more of this sort of advice as the recession deepens, so I’ll collect some of it here on this blog.
Stay tuned for further posts to the subject!
Useful Links:
HHS: Free and Low Cost Health Care Referrals
The Merck Manuals
Physicians’ Desk Reference: Prescription Drug Information
Ask The Nurse: Health & Medical Resources
MedHelp: All Ask Doctor Forums & Support Communities
Previous Posts About Health and Health Care
Inexpensive Health Care Tips – Intro
Inexpensive Health Care Tips – 2
Inexpensive Health Care Tips – 3
Medical Rationing and Medical Tourism
Basic Health Maintenance: Part I
Basic Health Care Maintenance: Part II
Shoestring Budget: Nutrition Posts
