*Yes, this post is about our ridiculously broken health care “system”
**No, this post has nothing to do with COVID-19 or Coronavirus. On with the story…
My son has swimmer’s ear. You know the one. The kid goes swimming and about 5 days or so later starts complaining that s/he can’t hear right or that it sounds “sloshy” in their ear. For my boy, it was coming and going with random pain and ear popping sensations over the course of about 10 days. We did Motrin when it bothered him, and tried swimmer’s ear drops for 3 days but it was clearly getting worse.
This shouldn’t be a big deal, right? Should be easy-peasy. Roll up to the doc’s office, check the swollen ear, then prescribe a nice Rx for swelling and antibiotic treatment. Or so you’d expect.
But the boy’s doctor’s office is really backed up right now with delayed appointments, school physicals, annual exams, and vacations having all piled up, so there is no way I can get him in. So I call the affiliated urgent clinic–I’ll call it “Nearitus Health Clinic”–and they get him right in. Yeah! That was the only real win of the health care story for us.
I drive my miserable kid to the grocery store where the clinic is. Mind you, I haven’t let my kids go in any grocery or convenience store in nearly 4 months because *cough* COVID *cough*, but now we have no choice. So, we donned our masks and walked straight to the clinic window. Luckily, the doc on duty wasn’t busy and was very nice. She quickly ushered us to the exam room and announced his ear was so swollen that “there is barely a hole there!” Yikes. Now I feel really shitty about telling him he was being a pansy when he whined and kicked around and wailed after we did the swimmer’s ear drops.
Anyway, the doc suggested an ear-drop that is two kinds of medicine combined–one for swelling and pain and another for antibiotic treatment. She asked me, “How’s your insurance”? I wondered at the question for an instant before replying that it’s fine but we have a high deductible. We’re just talking about ear drops here, right? Not like, surgery or something, sheesh!
Nice Doctor Lady then told me she was going to prescribe 2 kinds of drops separately because it was way less expensive than the name brand drops where they have already done that difficult job of combining the two medicines that she thought my son’s ear really needed. Obvi, that is the case with many kids or they wouldn’t make drops with both meds, right? So I’m like, that’s no problem, thank you for the assist.
After confirming my preferred pharmacy–let’s call it DVS–she tells me they may call her to ask about the Rx because the drops are often prescribed for eye use, but that is no big deal. FORESHADOWING!!!
Maybe an hour goes by and we get a message from DVS saying they have called the Doctor Lady with a question and will let me know when the script is ready.
*THREE HOURS LATER* I give up and call DVS and ask what is the deal with my kid’s Rx? The pharmacist tells me the medicine is labeled for use in both ears and eyes and she needs to know which it is for. I tell her quite patiently it is for his ear and she thanks me. Then the pharmacist, who I’m sure is overworked lately and just tired and not at all difficult or trying to irritate me in any way, tells me that her DVS location does not have one of these two drops and she will have to locate another branch with both meds for me.
Okay, so the pharmacist is very nice to call a couple stores and find one with both kinds of drops for my son. She calls me back a little later to let me know the address. By now, it is after 3pm and our appointment this morning was before 10am.
A little after this, we get a text that the new DVS store has son’s two types of Rx drops ready for pickup, so I head that direction a little after 4. Of course now people are showing up after work in droves and so I wait in the drive-thru for almost 10 minutes.
Once at the front of the line, pharmacist number 2 tells me that boy’s meds are ready but his insurance information isn’t in the computer, so she needs about 10 minutes to enter that data. “Would you mind pulling forward and waiting a few minutes and then getting back in line?” she asks. “Or you could just come in.” Ugh. Glad I brought my mask.
So… I wait in my hot car for 9 minutes and when I think I will stifle, I put on my mask and make a bee-line through the store to the pharmacy counter. Yes–meds are ready! Yes–there is only one person in line (because they’re all waiting in the drive-thru outside). But the two medicines total comes to $62. What?!? I am lucky that I can afford that, but good grief! That is for basic, generic ear drops. This wasn’t the price of the “expensive” name-brand ear drops the doctor preferred, but the “much cheaper” kind where I need to put drops in my kids ear from 2 different bottles for a week.
I cannot believe this process took me a full day! What if I had to go to a job? What if I didn’t have an extra $62? Our health care system is irrevocably broken and we need to raze it to the ground. I think a fresh start may be our only hope for combating the novel Coronavirus in the coming years… not to mention for effectively treating a damn ear infection.
In the meantime, stay safe and stay well!
–MaranthaB