Minute Clinic

My wife is not feeling well. She had allergies during the summer season, more severe than previous years when she had mild allergies. I guess it has something to do with the weird climate in the Midwest that caused a lot more ragweed pollen in the air this summer. Her allergies weakened her system as she has come down with some other illness as of late and have been coughing a lot, especially at night.

Initially we thought it was just a cold that would pass. But it did not and she had a particularly bad night on Friday. So Saturday we decided to go see somebody. Readers of this blog know my disdain for the health care system in our country. As a self employed person with a high deductible plan it is very difficult and very expensive to get any useful medical care in America. I'd love for us to have a national socialized health care system, or a complete free market health care system. I do not really have an ideological preference in this case. Anything would be better than this third payer system that Nixon and Kaiser Permenante schemed in 1970 to screw the American people.

The insurance companies bought the Republicans, the Lawyers bought the Democrats and they all ganged up against us, the people.

Any how... So here we are on a Saturday morning, my wife is not feeling good, did not sleep all night, so what to do?

I looked up the Minute Clinic, found the closest one to our place and packed everybody in the car and drove there.

It was inside a CVS pharmacy. When we got there, there was a computerized system that allowed us to register and wait our turn. There was a patient with the Nurse Practitioner and we were next. We waited for about 5 minutes and then she saw us. She checked up my wife thoroughly and diagnosed her with a bacterial infection. She prescribed some antibiotics for her and some over the counter decongestants. She offered to transmit the prescription electronically to any pharmacy of our choice or to fill it in at the CVS pharmacy since we were already there. We choose Costco since we are members, have our other prescriptions there and are generally priced significantly lower than other pharmacies. In mere seconds she had obliged.

Since we were there already we decided to get some flu shots. I try to get flu shots every year for myself and the kids. My wife is not too crazy about the concept and since she was sick she could not get them any how. I usually go to Costco, stand in line for about 15 minutes, fill in a ton of forms and get a $20 flu shot. The kids are a different story, since they are young Costco does not provide them with the flu shots. So we go to their pediatrician every year. The pediatrician, part of the awful health care system charges us $60 to review charts, $60 for "interview", and $60 for the shots. Since we have a high deductible, the insurance does not cover anything and we end up shelling out about $180 per kid for the flu shot.

So, here I am at the Minute Clinic. The Nurse said she can give us flu shots for $30 each, we filled in a short form, there was no wait, no lines, so special discrimination against the kids. Each flu shot was $15 for the shot and $15 to administer the shot for a total of $30. My wife's visit was $59. The antibiotics at Costco cost us $8.07.

At the end of the day, we were out about $160 in total for my wife's treatment, mine and the kids' flu shots and the antibiotics. The whole endeavor took about 45 minutes.

In contrast, had my wife gone to her doctor, she would've waited at the office for at least an hour, gave away all her personal information on lengthy forms that the doctor would happily sell to the insurance company and anybody else that is willing to pay, she would've got the exact same diagnosis yet she would've been billed for hundreds of dollars. Wasting her time and money.

 

I love the Minute Clinic.

My brother lives in Toronto. He loves the Canadian health care system. For all the bullshit lies we are told here about the Canadian health care system you just need to talk to a Canadian to discover the truth. My sister lives overseas, in the Middle East, she loves the health care system there. For all the lies we are told about other countries, you just need to talk to their citizens to discover the truth. We usually perform any major health care work overseas, my wife's LASIK surgery, my kids dental work, my annual check ups, etc... We get superior health care, save enough money to pay for the whole vacation and do not feel like we are robbed blind by the system.