It has been a year and a half since my first post to this blog. In that time I have spent $25,000 on fixin’ my heart, had a lot of drama including an exotic Asian adventure, and written over 11,000 words in nine posts :) only to be right back pretty much where I started, in the situation I described in the first few paragraphs of that first post. I have more or less returned to being a dropout from the American health business. I am again making the gamble that I am not seriously f—ed up, that I will make it to Medicare rather than handing over my retirement savings to the bottomless greed of the shareholders.
When I returned to Reno from gettin’ fixed in Istanbul I did re-establish my relationship with Dr Kedia and Reno Heart Physicians. I wanted to and also I pretty much had to. Job One in the post-op follow-up to heart surgery is getting frequent blood tests to calibrate the dosage of a powerful blood thinner one needs to take for a time after the operation. You cannot get blood work in America without a note from your doctor, and an Istanbul doctor doesn’t count.
The first check-in back with Dr K almost qualified as fun, although I do also recall being quite anxious, as in full of anxiety, when I entered the waiting room for the first time, since my only other experience after entering that room had been very, very unpleasant. Anyway, Dr K was nice, I was nice, the tech who administered my $97 EKG was nice … Dr K checked out Dr C’s handiwork … from the outside, that is she looked at how my scar was healing, thumped me, stethoscoped me and took my blood pressure, prescribed me a statin (cholesterol drug, the $4 Walmart version of Lipitor) and a blood pressure medicine, and $200 later I was outta there.
Second follow-up she bumped the b.p. med because my blood pressure was a little high, and said she wanted me to get a follow-up echo-cardiogram next time. So while paying my $136 I drop in on Billing and ask them how much an echo costs — and the answer is $900 – yikes!
To review numbers from previous posts, that happens to be exactly 1/20th (5%) of the cost of the operation and three weeks in the hospital in Turkey, including two echo tests, one before and one after the operation.
I have not been back for that third checkup. I am taking my meds pretty regularly, and sort of behaving myself – I could do better on the lifestyle front: eat better, exercise more, party less, but unless I invest in the test, I am failing to see the point in going back to the doctor. She will take my blood pressure, asked me about my lifestyle and how I’m feeling, guilt-trip me about the expensive test, and that will be that. And I can do all of those things to myself for free … if you count using the blood pressure machine at the supermarket.
I managed to figure out I had a problem the first time without the help of modern medical science (although I sure was glad it was there when I did), so i guess I can do it again if it comes to that.
I am not particularly proud of this, I am ready to fully concede that I am being a contrary, stubborn, cheap, all-around dumbass, and if I was advising myself, I’d say get over it and pay for the test and go back to the doctor. But there you have it – I think I have a good chance of making it for another 3.5 years to Medicare, or who knows, it’s just possible that our Congress will do something useful.
UPDATE: To my mild surprise, our Congress did do something! It’s not at all clear to me that what they did materially changes my situation. I think the requirement to buy insurance doesn’t kick in until 2014, and I will be under Medicare by then. I guess I will look into those insurance exchanges whenever they get set up. We certainly are a really backwards, stupid, spoiled country sometimes, with a really dysfunctional government all the time. In my rare gloomy moments, I am glad I won’t be around to see what a f—ed up mess the world will be, and more particularly what a loser country we will be in fifty years if we don’t get our act together in a number of ways that I think are sadly, really unlikely.
Leave a Reply