Friday, August 28, 2009

Capatilist Medecine

My beautiful three year old daughter has a shiner. A full on swell-your-eye-closed shiner. It's turned so many shades of purple it looks like a revlon ad. She got this by climbing up onto her bed's headboard and crashing into her nightstand.
She isn't a terribly accident prone child so this is our first brush with serious injury in quite some time. I'm sure this will be good experience because her brother appears to be a bit of a daredevil. As soon as I got up there (I'd been in the basement while she was in her room) I iced it and called my husband. He's always a good one to call in case of an emergency as he tends to be very level headed. He thought it best to go to the ER so away we went.
I got there fully expecting to wait for half an hour before we were seen by anyone with any medical knowledge. I was mistaken. A triage nurse took a look at her almost immediately and then did a more full examination about 15 minutes later. We were taken to a room very quickly where we were seen by no fewer than 3 nurses and one doctor. They let me hold Pudding while they treated and examined her. She squirmed around and cried a lot when they put the glue on. (I tried to make that part fun. I told her they were going to glue her back together just like the Tea Pot, didn't work.) They gave her a sticker and a little bear and sent us on our way. The whole thing took about an hour and a half and costs us about $150. That's a lot and I'm sure they bill our insurance company a boat load but I was happy to pay that if it meant that my baby got attention in a timely fashion and didn't have to wait in a room with sick people for 3 hours.
Yes, this didn't turn out to be anything life threatening or even all that crucial. Dilbert and I were discussing later and we discovered that the glue they used would've cost us about $5 at walgreen's but on the off chance that she had had a concussion or some more serious head injury, I'm glad that this frivilous trip to the ER was an option. I'm very afraid that once Obamacare get's put in place (I'm not one of those conservatives who is optimistic at this point) that it won't be. I'll have to call some beaurocrat who will asses weather or not my baby needs the limited medical care they have to offer before I can take her in. Someone who has no skin in the game will be calling the shots.

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