Want another good reason to wash the germs off your hands? Try paying $573 for the prescription drug Tamiflu that was prescribed for our family of four. My three year old daughter was running a fever, low grade but enough to make her miserable. I also noticed her sneezing and coughing. After twenty-four hours and the fever still persisting, I called and made an appointment at the pediatricians. She was tested with a nose swab for the flu and the results came back positive for the flu. Her pediatrician prescribed doses of Tamiflu for both my daughters then suggested my husband and I call our health care provider for preventive doses for us as well.
As I passed through the drive through of the pharmacy to drop off the prescription slips, I casually asked how much the medicine would cost.
All together, it’s $573 for the whole family with insurance deductibles,” The pharmacy technician replied.
My voice reached an unbelievable high pitch, “$573, with insurance?”. I had been thinking possibly a hundred dollars but could not believe that this was what we were expected to pay to help our daughter get well and protect the rest of us from the flu.
Each month, for medical insurance for the girls and me, we pay $352. The girls and me have a 3,500 dollar yearly medical deductible. We also each have a $250 yearly prescription deductible that apparently is being charged almost in full for the Tamiflu medication. My husband pays another $67 dollars every two weeks for his medical insurance at work, which is too expensive for us to join. Together, my family pays $486 in monthly medical insurance. This month we had three visits to the doctor, one well visit and two sick visits. One of the sick visits cost $103. The other two visits had co-payments of $25 each. With my monthly birth control prescription that cost $60, our total monthly medical expenditures so far for the first week of March is $1272 dollars.
We are a relatively health family, most of our appointments are preventative maintenance. This is insanity to pay $1272 for medicines and monthly insurance premiums, especially for one week. We are drowning in this muddle of medical costs where the one who benefits is definitely not the patient. If our girls were not so dependent on us, I know my husband and I would tough out the flu and forget the medicine for the sake of the insane price of healthcare costs in our country. For what do we pay monthly medical insurance? Where is the benefit to having monthly medical insurance? So, we can be seen quicker at the local physician office? So, we can set up another payment plan to have yet another monthly medical deduction? Somewhere the buck needs to stop and it needs to stop pouring from our wallet directly into the medical insurance deductible vault.
“More From This Contributor.”
http://voices.yahoo.com/birth-control-evolving-issue-11044234.html?cat=62
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/first-person-coupon-trap-165800683.html
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/first-person-gourmet-meals-100-week-162600475.html
