A broke hypochondriac

Late last year, I discovered that I couldn’t visit the doctor when I needed to. American doctors, it turns out, rarely see new patients, and when they do, it is often long after a patient recovers from their illness.

I made an appointment for three months down the line, and in late January I went to visit the doctor. It was a straightforward visit. The nurse took my height and weight, the doctor asked me if I was exercising and that was it. I was officially “in”. I was a known patient, no longer new, and I could make immediate appointments to see the doctor when I needed to. The front desk staff were kind enough to snip a vine off their pothos for me

Spring came amongst the gusts of a global pandemic. My pothos cutting had rooted and was growing new leaves. I opened my mailbox to find a letter from my insurance provider as well as one from the doctors office.

My charges included:

• $285 for service code 99385 - Preventative Visit New Age 18-39. This is the cost for a 15 minute meet and greet with my local family doctor.

• $35 for service code 96127 - Brief Emotional/Behavioural Assessment. This is the cost for the doctor to ask a few questions that amount to “are you okay”.

At the current exchange rate, that’s about AUD$500.

The insurance would not cover any of this.

What makes this frustrating is that there was no way for me to find out how much the appointment would have cost me. Neither the doctor’s office nor the insurance company was able to tell me at the time. If I had known that the appointment would cost more than $300, I would have passed up on it.

Maybe I will feel better about this bill if I think of it as the cost of being able to make a next day doctors appointment instead of having to wait months.

I’m still going to avoid the doctor though.