Because I am hypo-thyroid (have been diagnosed and on meds for 29 years), I see my doctor regularly…blood tests, mammograms, all those things that “they” want you to do regularly…I had my repeat colonoscopy a few months ago and for the next couple of months, received a slew of bills from all those associated with the procedure. The hospital bills us, as does the doctor who performed the procedure, the anesthesiologist, the lab…when all is said and done, it has cost a few hundred dollars out of my pocket, plus a few thousand out of my insurance company. And that is just for an “elective” procedure. My husband’s “necessary” procedure reaped the same flurry of bills which will total a pretty penny (I love that phrase).
We have insurance. I don’t know how good it is, but we pay a lot for it and we have it. And still it costs us hundreds of dollars to take care of ourselves the way the health professionals advise.
I shudder to think how someone without insurance or without the means to pay the uncovered portions must feel as each envelope is retrieved from the mailbox…sick and hopeless…makes my stomach hurt.
There are more than 45 million Americans without health insurance on any given day. That’s why I get so weary of the politicians who major in minors. I don’t care much how we get there, but we have to become a society in which basic health care is a right for all — not just the desperately poor, as it is now, or the wealthy who can easily afford it. Young, healthy people need to share in the cost because they could have an accident on any day, and because they will get older.
People without insurance or without the means to pay for it (like me) would not get a bill in mail because we would never have any of those tests done.
I only go to the dr in an emergency, which sucks really….but I also know that medical bills would bankrupt me. Again.
It is sad.