My Brush With the Health Care Industry

I am a yogi and don’t have to go to a doctor very often. When I do see a doctor it is usually a friend who treats me for free, but a few weeks ago I was not able to see him and had a medical situation which really opened my eyes to the injustice of the health care system in the USA (HealthandRecoveryInstitute).

During the second week of September I noticed that my right eye was very irritated. I went to a mirror and thought that maybe an eyelash or hair from my eyebrows was brushing against my eyes. I didn’t know what was going on and then decided that I should see an eye doctor the next day. An eye doctor’s appointment at a local giant supermarket is relatively cheap at $50.

However, that night I was teaching a meditation course and noticed that the right side of my mouth was also numb and it impaired my ability to speak properly. One of my students in the class noticed this too, and she became alarmed thinking that perhaps I had suffered a stroke. I had asked her to drive me to the eye doctor appointment because my eye was so irritated that I could not drive properly. She agreed to do this.

But the next morning she called me and told me that perhaps I had suffered a stroke and that we should best go to the emergency room of a local hospital instead of the eye doctor. We went to the emergency room and the reception clerk listened to my symptoms and she too thought that it might be a stroke. I was sent to a room waiting to see a doctor.

After a short while the doctor entered the room and looked at me. He saw that my right eye was not blinking, and that is why it was so irritated and that the lines on my right forehead were now smooth. In less than ten minutes he diagnosed me with Bells Palsy. This is a condition in which there is facial paralysis on one side. He said that the condition is caused by problem with one nerve that controls these facial functions. He also said that in 80 per cent of the cases, the condition cures itself in a few weeks time, and he prescribed a steroid compound which helps alleviate some of the symptoms.

I went back to my home and was a bit worried because I could not function properly at all. I couldn’t even close my right eye and had to use an eye patch at night in order to get to sleep. I went online to learn more about Bell’s Palsy and found that some people had the condition for months and even for more than one year. I was hoping that I would be among the ones who experienced a quick recovery.

One of my friends mentioned that Bell’s Palsy is a condition which can be cured with homeopathy, and I called another friend who is practicing homeopath. She gave me a remedy and I took it and held off on taking the steroid compound prescribed by the doctor in the emergency room.

Meanwhile I did some more research and also found out that the facial paralysis of Bell’s Palsy is one of the symptoms of Lyme Disease. Lyme Disease is contracted when one is bitten by ticks who have been hosting on deer. This disease is now quite prevalent in some parts of the U.S. Only two months previously I had been in upstate New York where this disease is quite a problem. I consulted with a few friends and they urged me to get tested for the disease. I spoke to my doctor friend in North Carolina and he said that he could get a test for the disease costing about $35 from his local lab. The only catch was that I would have to spend $400 to fly there to get it.

I decided to go to a local walk-in clinic. They said it would cost somewhere between $100 and $400. I saw a doctor in the clinic and blood was taken from me for a lyme disease test. I had to wait over the weekend to get the results of the test. Meanwhile the homeopathic remedy seemed to be working and within ten days the facial paralysis was cured.

However I had in fact tested positive for lyme disease. The doctor prescribed a two week course of antibiotics which I did take, because I didn’t want to mess around with lyme disease. It has been over a month since I had the first symptoms of trouble with my face and I feel around 90% cured of whatever was affecting me. That is the good news, the bad news is that I was hit up hard by my brief encounter with the health care system.

The hospital which owned the emergency room sent me a bill of $1500 which they graciously reduced to $900 because I am not insured. However the good news here is that this hospital allowed me to submit a special financial aid request and finally they dropped their charge for the emergency room services. I thought the initial emergency room charges were pretty steep, but was really shocked when I got a bill from an agency representing the doctor who saw me for ten minutes and misdiagnosed my condition as simple Bell’s Palsy. That bill was $1000 which means that had he stayed a full hour it would have been around $4000. That’s a pretty good hourly wage! I spoke with a doctor from the emergency doctors’ agency and complained about this kind of outrageous hourly pay, and he said that the doctors don’t make that much. But still, someone is profiting enormously from this.

I hardly creased the paper on the inspection bed at the emergency room and stayed there for less than one half hour and was charged $900. Are these facilities so expensive that such charges are justified?

Also the nice little walk in clinic where I went to see if I had Lyme disease or not charged me $100 up front and then sent me another bill for over $600 on top of that and to make matters worse I also got a bill from from the laboratory doing the Lyme disease test for another $388.  If someone walks in to a doctor and wants to know if he has Lyme disease or not, should it cost him $1000?

All this happened while the tea party people were weeping over the coming of Obamacare and “socialized medicine.” These people say that they don’t want the government getting involved in health care. They don’t want the government to have a role but they have no problem with profit-making hospitals, profit-making insurance companies and overpaid doctors taking care of them.

One of my colleagues used to wear a vest which read “those who profit from the sufferings of others are immoral.” Amen, to that. We really need to throw private enterprise out of the health care system and institute a system that ensures good medical treatment for all people without sending them into economic ruin.