Two stitches and a tetanus shot...$900

Why do you hate America, deskslave?

 

He's a commie!

 

I'll give you guys a story...

Was playing tackle football at a friend's graduation party. Doing pretty well for myself. That is, until I got tackled by four guys on a pass reception and driven down hard.

I remember getting up and walking into my friend's house, going into her bathroom to inspect what I knew was a cut (the leaking blood was a good indicator) and eventually found out that the back of my head hit a tree stump and made a pretty nasty looking cut.

So, like anyone, I had my friend drive me to the ER. We get there and I'm laughing uncontrolably. And I'm not making that up. I literally had no intention of laughing, but everything that was said I found funny. Not a normal situation.

Apparently the douche of an ER receptionist on call that night must not have thought my head wound was serious enough, because five hours later I had still not yet been seen. Mind you, my fucking skull is bleeding, and it wasn't no pussy amount either, this was some serious shit. They gave me a ghetto icepack (ice wrapped in a towel) which I later got a bill for $40 for.

After hour number five, I say fuck it and decide I'm going to another ER. Drive 20 minutes to get there and am immeidately taken in and stiched up. I had around 20 stitches put into my head.

A couple weeks later, I go back to get the stitches taken out and it takes the doctor (no word of a lie) 15 minutes to take them out. I get a bill for $720 for the return visit. For 15 minutes! Needless to say, luckily I had been under my parent's insurance otherwise I wouldn't have paid him for jack shit.

 

Here's a question I have for the Canuckistans among us: Does your health care cost the same? I'm not talking about personal bills, but are the values of the services and products similar to what they would be in the U.S.? I'm wondering the actual costs (because a tetanus shot isn't free to manufacture) vs. capitalist markup.

 

If what happened to Bat had happened to me, I would have walked into our local Urgent Care unit, got stitched, received my tetanus shot and walked out. The quality of the care would have been exactly the same.

The only thing I would have had to pay for was the parking (bastards, $2.00 a half hour).

I don't want to start one of those nonsensical "Canadian Healthcare is Socialized Medicine" threads but these two pieces are worth reading if you want a clean and simple comparable between our system and yours:

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/mythbusting-canadian-health-care-part-i

And this:

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/mythbusting-canadian-healthcare-part-ii-debunking-free-marketeers

 

OK, I'm way too lazy to read all that ... the bottom line is, your doctor has to explain what he's doing to you in French and in English, while wearing a Mountie hat, right?

 

Health care is expensive. You pay for it one way (directly) or another (through taxes). No way around it, so long as people keep going to the ER when they stub their toes and so long as many don't get proactive about maintaining good health.

 

In between periods of the hockey game, of course.