Unemployed, and uninsured
on 11/06/2011 at 11:15 AM
I totally agree. We have ‘insurance’ (military) that 90% of the docs, hospitals, eye docs and other specialists won’t take. I told both the civilian doc we were using (until Feb of this year) and the Military docs - can’t do anything but insure that I’m not dying of something right now - can’t pay the co-pays nor the costs not covered. They didn’t listen, both sent me off with a stack of referrals. Not doing the ‘preventative’ testing. I don’t have the money. Period. End of it.
The dentist, I had to buy a policy on my own - as when we retired they wanted to raise our payment 5Xs what we were paying, doubled I would have accepted, not 5 times. So the policy I have is cheap and covers the basic. Right now the only one using it, is our son. He can’t brush well and has his SSI coming in - so he needs to see the dentist. But the rest of us, I just chant - brush and floss and stop eating candy!
In the military towns I lucked into good dentists and eye care. Here I think it is against the law to be of any help at all. The first eye place wanted as much for one pair of glasses (not accepting the eye plan we had at all) then we ended up paying for 3 pairs. And the first dentist treated us like criminals and wanted me to sign a loan form before even letting us in. The dentist we have has floated a couple of charges for my son.
And the charges that I end up paying at the eye doctor (I have glaucoma) just keeps going up and up every year. Thankfully I’ve gotten managed enough I’m only going once a year.
Get the fr*ckin’ insurance companies out of it - that’s just a hand in the pot and you can’t tell me costs have gone down since they became so involved.
My Dad charged $8.00 for an office visit - try to find anything close to that now. We left our civilian doc when he wanted to charge a fee to fill out the damn insurance forms.
It’s a racket made worse by the regs gov set in place, insureance, legal lottery and only going to get worse, if Congress does not REPEAL obamacare.
I happen to know my doctor charged my insurance $160 for an office visit. I paid a $20 copay, so the rest was just filing paperwork. Without insurance, I paid $60 out of pocket.
Again, give me a tax-free medical savings account and a catastrophic medical insurance policy. It’s supposed to be insurance. My car insurance does not give me a copay for regular check-ups. It does one thing: insures me against catastrophic loss.
My doc also wants blood tests. They charge my insurance, if I had it, over $700. Without insurance? Out-of-pocket? $135. I can afford that. Why do I need insurance for that?
You don’t, Chris. I’m retired and uninsured, and am doing fine. I’ve found that nearly 100% of all medical firms will accept prompt 50% or less pay in lieu of the “billed” amount. Emergency rooms can be a dick about it, but I simply don’t go to emergency rooms, unless there is spurting blood or detached parts or visible internal guttiworks. Or bones sticking out of extremities. You know - serious stuff.
Your blood tests are a good example. They list for $500-700 with insurance, but for self-payers, they cost $100-150. Drs, too, will negotiate on their fees. Most I’ve dealt with discount heavily for cash on the barrel head and no tax records.
The hardest part was developing the negotiation skills and trust from others in a field not my own.
Hope you get employed soon. It isn’t tech - predominantly - that’s down, is it?
Wow - even with insurance, my son pays a bit for blood work - we ended up going straight to the hospital for that as the stupid civilian docs lab doubled charged and no one (even with our insurance form stating that this is the charged and that is exactly what he paid - so I said no more at that lab)would help us fight it. The civ lab charged $125/per for my daughters allergy testing - which at the MTF was no charge for us - we should have just taken her up there - we might know exactly what she is allergic to (other than the anaphalytic attack, that was proven)- but she has something to do, once she gets her own income and/or insurance!
GMS - IT, not in OH right now - hubby is now looking at TN for a job. Only thing he got offered (since Dec. 2010) is a Part Time Temp Call Center job. It’s awful here and we are hoping to survive long enough to get the heck out of dodge.
Sorry about your daughters’ allergies.
I had allergies when I was a teen. Mom & Dad took me to an allergist, who proceeded to carve my back up and stick samples in just to see what bubbled up. Turned out I was allergic to 99% of everything. So once a week, for a couple of years, I’d go straight from school to my family doctor for five shots. Either it worked, or the allergist was a fraud.
Haven’t had an asthma attack since. I really hated those asthma attacks.
My parents paid that out-of-pocket. Dad didn’t have any health insurance through work.
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