Money Talks

I went to the doctor a couple of days before I left Raleigh in an attempt to ensure that I arrived back to the US alive and relatively whole. Unfortunately, I'm taking a 6 week break from work right now, which means that I'm taking a 6 week break from my insurance. See where this is going? Did you know that it costs $133 just to talk to a doctor for 2.3 minutes? And did you ALSO know that when you go in knowing exactly what the problem is AND how to fix it, they still test you for pregnancy, cholesterol, ear infections, holes in the heart, spina bifida, small pox, and brain tumors?

And to make it all that much worse, they took three VERY LARGE VIALS of blood. And when I asked them why that was necessary, they said they needed to test for STD's. At which point, I informed them that Mother Teresa would've been more likely to have an STD than me, that I didn't WANT to be tested for STD's in the first place, that I hadn't authorized that test, and that they were VERY BAD PEOPLE. They ignored me. I told them I wouldn't pay for it. They promptly stopped all further tests, and I left there, having paid approximately $8,192,485 for a piece of paper with illegible writing on it and a doctor's name and phone number on the corner.