When you don’t have insurance, you sometimes ‘abuse’ the system by default.

I went to the emergency room for strep-throat treatment years and years ago (after having strep for nearly 2 months thinking I would go to a doctor as soon as I could get the money together). Doctors here require that you pay upfront, co-pay for insurance if you have it, full pay if you don’t. A doctor’s visit for this would have been over $100, and I just didn’t have it. After I fainted after having maintained a fever of over 100 degrees for 3 days straight working a temp job overtime to get the $100 on my next paycheck (which would have been 2 weeks away) I went to the emergency room that day. They have to treat you in most ERs, they can’t turn you away. You have to wait a long time naturally because they have to treat people about to die or who are sicker than you first. Going to the ER for minor health conditions strains that hospital but often for folks without insurance it’s the only way to see a doctor. I got seen after a 4 hour wait and billed, I think it was $500 or so dollars. Which I didn’t pay then because we were so broke. I paid it almost 3 years later. I’ve not paid other similar hospital bills, which is a big reason my credit is so sketchy.

Let me see…oh yeah when my son broke his thumb a few years ago we did not have insurance at that time either, so we had to go to the ER to get a temporary cast and a referral. The orthopedics in our area used to not take any patients without a referral, which is just a slick way for insurance companies to make more money. So we had to pay a good chunk to the ER and close to $300 to the bone docs.

I was lucky in finding a general internist for our family doctor when Todd was a baby. She worked with us when we did not have insurance, lowering her fees to just $25 to see the kids and $40 to see us. and she didn’t make me pay it upfront either, plenty of times we did not even have $25 right then and she understood that. often times we had to pay her a week or 2 later. Todd has allergies and other respiratory problems that are just now being resolved (he’s 8 now) so we saw her a lot. Because of her kindness we stuck with her even after a move 30 miles away, she’ll always be our family doctor. and now that we have good insurance it is a pleasure to be able to pay her full price (or rather have the insurance pay her full price; our co-pay is $15).

I also was lucky to live in a large city (Cleveland) that has city health clinics that aren’t as expensive as private doctors, once I found that out that helped us a lot too when we couldn’t see our doctor due to transportation. and they have improved, I hear now the wait is not so long for an appointment and they will take walk-in patients. Even back then they offered free immunizations for kids and low-cost doctor visits, but about the same price as private docs for adults.

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