Health insurance
The nose spray the doctor prescribed was $124 dollars after the insurance so we decided not to get it because we could not afford it. It is a non addictive type spray unlike many of the over the counter sprays. Rather than get it we took our chances with not being able to breath at night.
The bill for each of us was $105 each for the doctor visit and we each paid a $15 dollar co-pay and insurance only covered $41.25 and we had to pay the additional $63.75 each. So these visits were $78.75 each which is over 65% of the costs so we are wondering if we dropped the insurance and offered to pay the doctors cash if they would go for it.
Our son went into the doctor the next week for his vaccinations and for his cough and the bill was $583 but we have not gotten what our charges will be for that yet.
The same son had an accident at the park when he hit heads with a friend and he got 11 stitches and a CT scan where they found a small bleed on the brain and a cracked cheekbone. We are guessing that bill will be in the thousands. His face is swollen and numb on one side yet the doctor said he will be ok after the swelling goes down. My son is sick of it since the eyelashes are poking him in the eye because the eye is swelling shut.
I took my other son to the ER a couple of years ago because he got hit in the nose and it cut the side of his face and we waited only to be told they suggested that we not stitch it up but leave it alone. The doctor only looked at it, he did not clean or touch it yet the bill was over $500 for that ER visit and all they did was weigh him, take his blood pressure and temperature and then look at his nose and the only part the doctor did was look at it.
We pay just over $300 per month for health insurance. Select Med Healthsave through Selecthealth. We have to fill out specific activities each quarter or the bill goes up. If we were smokers or overweight the bill would go up. The plan we have is through my wife's work and if I got the insurance through my work it would be over $600 per month since it is a small company.
My wife went to the dentist the other day and the procedure she needed to have done was over $800 dollars and that is after the insurance paid their portion.
My daughter got her braces in Guatemala for $1500 but she came back to the US and we paid another $700 for them to followup and take them off. Then once you include the airfare to Guatemala which was about $800 it comes up to about $3000 which was the cost of my son's braces here in town at a learning office which is about 1/2 the cost of braces.
When my wife was a single mother she had two jobs and that made it so she could not qualify for government assistance. Then when we got married we made too much together to qualify for any government programs yet we did not make enough in order to pay the normal bills that would come up. So even though we have insurance these out of pocket expenses get so high that it takes money mostly out of our food budget which is not the best place to pull it but that is how it works out.
In Guatemala many medical procedures cost less than they do here in the US although sometimes the treatments or procedures can cause problems and what recourse do you have? I know people who have had their makeup tattooed on by a woman that has a business doing this in Mexico all of these women love the results. They pay a small fraction of what it would cost in a clinic here in the US. The technology is sometimes a bit behind in other countries although the orthodontist my daughter had, had new technology, specialized cameras and monitors mounted to her chair and put all the charts, pictures and X rays on a USB for us. This orthodontist comes to the US for periodic training on a regular basis.