The joys of the American Healthcare System, pt 3 – the bill.
I just got the first round of the bill for my emergency room visit the other week. For 3 hours of sitting in the emergency room, retelling my case, US$389 (not covered by my sucky job-provided insurance). For five minutes of CAT scan, US$1121 (also not covered by my sucky job-provided insurance.)
Have I mentioned how much I love the American health-care system? Except as a method for enriching major donors to the Evil Party, it sucks, and it grows suckier every year, and all so the USA can be healthier than, um, the ex-Soviet Union, which has already had its healthcare system devastated by the nasty "shock therapy" regime the capitalists foisted on it after the Soviet Union fell over after 70 years of mismanagement. If I wanted to be healthy, I should have told my ancesters to side with the British! -- then they would have been kicked out of the USA and forced to settle in Canada, which, aside from having functional civil liberties, has a healthcare system that isn't in the clutches of unfettered money-grubbing vampires.
Oh, right, "avoid stress". Between the depradations of the American health-care system and the B*sh junta trying to start a pogrom against liberals , "avoid stress" becomes even more of a joke than it was in the first place. (To make matters more calming, the bulk of my family, INCLUDING the married lesbian couple which are sort-of-virtual-cousins-in-law, are having a damned family reunion in darkest rural Jesusland. What a wonderful place to have a reunion when the US Government is trying to start a pogrom. You can imagine my lack of stress today.)