I’ve written before about the crazy healthcare system here in the US. I don’t like it but I put up with it because, well, I have no choice and we have pretty good insurance. Here’s my most recent experience:

Me: Thank you for my prescription for eye drops, how much is that nice chemist lady?

Nice chemist lady: (looks sheepish and nudges packet across the counter to me, showing the cost printed on it in small type)

Me: 200 bucks??!!! Really?? What’s in it? Gold?

Nice chemist lady: Yeah, maybe (and continues to look sheepish)

I restrain myself from going into my NHS rant and pay the bill.

And today the complete opposite happened. I took J to the doctor and just couldn’t resist sharing my 200 dollar story so she took pity on me and gave me a handful of samples instead of yet another phenomenally expensive prescription and said ‘use those, I get loads’. Ha!

Then they couldn’t get their new IT system to work; it couldn’t cope with the fact that I wanted to ‘pay out of pocket’ because they don’t recognise my insurance, so I walked out without paying! I’ll have to go back and pay the bill later, but I did enjoy the frisson of excitement from not having paid…