1,000$ there must be some mistake?

[NowhereMan]

Plus you could probably also get some BUPA on top for a hell of a lot less than private insurance in the states. And we've got pretty much the worst public health service in the developed wolrd

[Midama]

 It could have been worse. Last November i went to the ER with severe stomach pain, sent to sit in a back room for two hours, one ultra sound later i was told i might have gallstones and to see a family practice doctor on my own time, and given about 10 vicodin.
 
 $4,000 fucking dollars, and was uninsured at the time. I ended up putting off seeing a doctor until my insurance kicked in for fear they would have called it a pre existing condition and not cover the surgery.
 
 

[Hindenburg]

You pay for the convince of one stop service.

Yeah, your line of thought has a key flaw. No price was given to him in advance. Not even the basic checkup cost.
If you're gonna compare it to any other service, you gotta play by the rules they play.

[Sky]

It could have been worse. Last November i went to the ER with severe stomach pain, sent to sit in a back room for two hours, one ultra sound later i was told i might have gallstones and to see a family practice doctor on my own time, and given about 10 vicodin.
 
 $4,000 fucking dollars, and was uninsured at the time. I ended up putting off seeing a doctor until my insurance kicked in for fear they would have called it a pre existing condition and not cover the surgery.

I don't want to know how much they charged my mother to sit in a chair with her first sciatica for six hours. After three or four hours they offered her a tylenol with codeine 

[shiznitz]

Our healthcare system works best is a) you're wealthy, b) you're well educated, and c) you have LOTS of insurance.  If you don't fit into all three of those, you're pretty much fucked.  If you do a search on healthcare among these threads you'll see that we've gone over this at length. 

Sorry to hear about your situation.  I understand completely... I've done some ER work. 

a) b) and c) are a load of shit.  Our healthcare system works best if a) you have a full time job and b) you don't use the emergency room for dental work.  How the hell does being educated or not have anything to do with it?

[CharlieMopps]

A. Standard ER visit is $1000. Period. It's there to keep you OUT. You're only supposed to go there for Life/Death situations. While you're in there complaining about your tooth, there's some poor sap outside having a heart attack.
B. Never go to any sort of Doctor over tooth pain. Dr's NEVER EVER treat teeth. They might give you pain killers but in truth they rarely ever work. Funny thing is, Ibuprofen works best because the pain is mostly caused by swelling around the nerve.
C. An abscess tooth is the most intense pain you'll ever go through. I've had broken bones, had teeth drilled without anesthesia, been ran over by a car, burned my arm from the elbow to the tips of my fingers and nothing even came close.
D. If you had a regular dentist you could have called him up and he would have come in on the weekend even at night to treat your tooth. Once in the chair he would have relieved the pain in under a minute. (ok, may 2 or 3)

I know this, my wife is a dental assistant and she has to go in on her days off all the time to treat morons that haven't had their teeth check in the past 15years, are about to get on a flight to the Bahamas and suddenly realize they have an abscess tooth and maybe they should get that fixed before leaving the country. In many cases the patients are shocked to find out they actually need to have 3 or 4 teeth pulled because they've neglected them so long. She has stories of pulling 1 tooth and having the teeth adjacent to it just fall right out along with it.

Oh yea, and after you left, your dentist was laughing with his assistant about your ER bill. Then she went home, told her husband and he laughed to. 

[Nebu]

a) b) and c) are a load of shit.  Our healthcare system works best if a) you have a full time job and b) you don't use the emergency room for dental work.  How the hell does being educated or not have anything to do with it?

Let me give you the quote I got that from:

American Healthcare Is the Best in the World If. . .

Disclosure: George D. Lundberg, MD, is an employee of WebMD.

How many times in the past 20 years have you heard some American politician proclaim, "the American healthcare system is the best in the world." Too many, I fear. But let's face it. People tend to speak most fervently from their own personal experiences. Maybe those politicians, medical or otherwise, actually believed what they said. One could make the case that "the American healthcare system is the best in the world if:

1) You have full, comprehensive, in-depth health insurance coverage with low deductibles and copayments, and no exclusions for pre-existing conditions;
2) You live in a major metropolitan area;
3) You have a long-term relationship with a physician who serves your primary care needs, seeks specialist attention when needed, and finds the right specialist;
4) You speak and understand good English and so does your doctor, and you are neither sight- nor hearing-impaired;
5) You are well educated;
6) You have money and transportation capability;
7) You are white;
8) You are naturally skeptical and questioning;
9) You personally access the internet to help you take charge of your life; and, until recently
10) You are male.

Well, maybe those characteristics describe many of those politicians and explain why they may actually feel the way they do. But, woe unto all those other folks. That's my opinion. 

I happen to agree with him.

[CharlieMopps]

dude... teeth are not healthcare. They're teeth. He could have pull the tooth at home if he really wanted to. They did it for like 10,000 years until recently.

[HaemishM]

They had children at home too. And if healthcare costs keep spiraling up, we'll go back to those ways just to be able to feed the little crumbsnatcher.

[Hindenburg]

teeth are not healthcare.

I will find your tombstone and carve that sentence as your epitaph.

[CharlieMopps]

teeth are not healthcare.

I will find your epitaph and carve that sentence in it.

It was the beginning to a Haiku

Teeth are not healthcare
I dun care bout your grammars
Grammar nazzi's suck

[gryeyes]

A. Standard ER visit is $1000. Period. It's there to keep you OUT. You're only supposed to go there for Life/Death situations. While you're in there complaining about your tooth, there's some poor sap outside having a heart attack.

I don't think you really appreciate the situation of what an abscessed tooth is. Lets just say its a fucking emergency. Justifying a 1300 dollar price to have an ER doctor look at me for about 2 minutes is moronic. Yes a standard ER visit is 1,000 brilliant deduction yet i somehow find the justification "itz ta keeps ya out!" particularly insightful nor accurate.

B. Never go to any sort of Doctor over tooth pain. Dr's NEVER EVER treat teeth. They might give you pain killers but in truth they rarely ever work. Funny thing is, Ibuprofen works best because the pain is mostly caused by swelling around the nerve.

While i find your point by point analysis amusing. You just recommended Ibuprofen for a fucking abscess tooth...jesus fuck 

You obviously have no conception of the degree of severity of the situation. My face was swollen to an amazing degree. I had blackish coloration around my eyes. I was in mind numbingly pain. No amount of normal physical damage could cause such distress.  Unless Ibuprofen somehow reduces the pressure caused by pus and other fluids trapped inside your root structure/jaw bone. Also truthfully the pain killers worked just fucking amazing. So pretty much everything beyond "never goto doctor for teeth" is just blatantly stupid.

I did not go to the emergency room to receive dental work. I went to the ER because i was experiencing pain beyond my wildest nightmares and my face was a swelling horror.

C. An abscess tooth is the most intense pain you'll ever go through. I've had broken bones, had teeth drilled without anesthesia, been ran over by a car, burned my arm from the elbow to the tips of my fingers and nothing even came close.

This point seems at contrast with your "take some Ibuprofen it works wonders".

D. If you had a regular dentist you could have called him up and he would have come in on the weekend even at night to treat your tooth. Once in the chair he would have relieved the pain in under a minute. (ok, may 2 or 3)

I have a regular dentist, I receive a checkup every 6 months and resolve all complications as soon as they are diagnosed. This event occurred at around 2AM Saturday morning. I could not get seen by any dentist until Sunday. I had an abscess tooth due to "trauma" I had somehow "cracked" the tooth but not to a degree that i was aware of an issue until it became infected.

It had absolutely nothing to do with neglect. And having a regular dentist did not solve the issue.

[Engels]

I managed an abscess tooth, seriously infected too, for a couple of weeks (the antibiotics had to work before they would even operate). I took extra strength tylenol. The last few days I did take a few vicodin, however.

[gryeyes]

You managed a couple of weeks with seizure inducing pain and a grotesquely swollen blue/black face?

You are a beast.

Im sure abscesses come in a wide variety of degrees of pain. I can confidently say we were not experiencing the same thing.

[MahrinSkel]

There are things called "Urgent Care Centers".  They can deal with just about anything an ER would without sending you to a different part of the hospital (and can usually admit you to one without the huge costs of going in through the ER.  They cost about 20-25% as much.  However, if you don't have insurance, they want cash up front.  Some states, they can also run a private practice shell and be your PCP, which I did in Virginia.  Knowing you can see a doctor at 2am while coughing up no more than a standard co-pay is re-assuring.

Depth of these facilities varies considerably from state to state.  In VA, they had everything an ER would have except the wait (I never waited longer than 30 minutes from when I walked in the door before I saw a doc, often my PCP here can't manage that when I have an appointment, which isn't unusual in most GP practices).  In TN, the one I used was quite a bit more stripped down and generally only had LPN's at night, but it was about 200 yards from a hospital with a full trauma center.  It would take a major disaster before ambulances would bring them patients, so it's unlikely you'll get bumped for an MVA while waiting for a doctor's two minutes (they also spent considerably more time with me, about the same as I would have expected from my normal PCP).

The bad news is that you'll almost never find them in towns under 250K, and the doctors tend to be even younger and more foreign than is normal in an ER.  One guy, I had to ask him to get a nurse or assistant to act as translator, I only got about every third word through what I *think* was an Argentinian accent (I've only heard that one a few times, so I'm not sure).

--Dave

[Abagadro]

Shoulda just downed most of a bottle of bourbon.

[gryeyes]

There are "Urgent Care Centers" or their equivalent around here. Before just deciding to fuck it and pay a normal dentist cash out of pocket i looked into all kinds community type deal/places just to established a regular dentist/doctor for checkups. But since I 1. Had no form of insurance and 2. Was not poor so could not receive any kind of financial assistance they completely denied me attempting to schedule an appointment.

I clearly explained that i would be willing to pay whatever sum of money they required before receiving service and they STILL said they would not. They said if i had a medical/dental emergency i could come in and wait to be seen if no other patients were present they would deal with me. What I am assuming is that once I get in a doctor/dentist that from that point onward they are forced to give me whatever treatment that i require. And since i had no insurance they were not even willing to let me in even with an offer of prepayment. I really couldn't figure out a motivation for their behavior.

Shoulda just downed most of a bottle of bourbon.

I wish i could explain the level of pain. So far beyond weed,alcohol,aspirin. So intense it was not even localized to the tooth in question. I was pacing around like a wild animal literally moving around in an attempt to make the pain less intense.Removing an arm with an Axe would not be as painful. It wouldn't even be close.

[Engels]

You managed a couple of weeks with seizure inducing pain and a grotesquely swollen blue/black face?

You are a beast.

Im sure abscesses come in a wide variety of degrees of pain. I can confidently say we were not experiencing the same thing.

You suddenly woke up one morning in this condition? Remember, that seems to have been the whole premise to the visit to the ER. That it was sudden and urgent. Mine took a few days to develope. Sure, there are different sorts of abscess teeth, but I sorta doubt that any variety sprout overnight.

My excuse was that I was out of state at a wedding when it emerged. I kept from going homicidal through extra strength tylenol and booze. By the time I got back, the infection was so engrained that the anaesthetic couldn't get to the roots of the tooth due to the skin's inflamation and the puss. I had to go for another week on antibiotics to get the swelling down.

Don't get me wrong, it was probably some of the worst pain I've ever been in, next to a cracked rib and the removal of an ingrown toenail w/o anaesthetic (1970s, Spain. in Spain, El Caudillo Cures You).

I guess its just suggests that there's more to the story than suddenly awakening with a sudden full blown abscess.

[Oban]

Tylenol and alcohol, worst pain killer combination ever.

I agree with Gryeyes, if the pain is bad you are going to want it taken care of immediately.  Plus, I doubt that anyone in such extreme pain is going to be thinking rationally about how much it will cost to make the pain go away.

As for Virginia and Urgent Care facilities, god I miss those.  We had one in Reston, Access, that had a better setup than the hospital next door.  Fully loaded with a helicopter pad attached to take people to a specialized hospital if the patient needed attention above and beyond what they could provide.  Very short wait times and they were open 24 hours a day.  They have since been acquired by a group that has taken the service in to the shitter, but the concept should really be expanded nationally and in to Canada.

[gryeyes]

You suddenly woke up one morning in this condition? Remember, that seems to have been the whole premise to the visit to the ER.

I woke up at around 11PM with some moderate pain in my face/tooth area. I could not really pinpoint the pain specifically but noticed with my tongue a slight "bump" on my gum line that was pretty sensitive. . I drank some water then went back to sleep. In about 1 hour the pain intensified by 1,000 times making sleep impossible and the swelling in my mouth/ face started to get extremely bad. At this point i was in pain so severe i could barely think. I am far from a puss this was a type of pain beyond any comparisons. The pain was so bad i had to call and wake up my sister to drive for fear of me crashing. It was just unrelenting pain the only thing i could do that would lessen the pain at all was swish freezing cold water on the tooth. And even all that seemed to do was short circuit the pain for about 20 seconds.

I had already looked up my symptoms so i was aware of what was going on and what was needed to remedy the situation. As well as the possible complications (death is a possibility) especially with the extreme swelling in my face. I knew the only remedy a hospital would offer was pain prescription and anti-biotics. But there was simply no dealing with the pain for any sort of delaying the process.

I lead a fairly active life style and im guessing i took a knock to the face while boxing or riding dirt bikes weeks or even months previously (I had not seen a doctor in probably 3-4 months). An infection set in and was completely symptomless until the day of doom. The dentists said the infection appeared to have been around for awhile. I also had to wait i believe around 5 days for a course of anti-biotics.

[Sky]

There are things called "Urgent Care Centers".  They can deal with just about anything an ER would without sending you to a different part of the hospital (and can usually admit you to one without the huge costs of going in through the ER.  They cost about 20-25% as much.  However, if you don't have insurance, they want cash up front.  Some states, they can also run a private practice shell and be your PCP, which I did in Virginia.  Knowing you can see a doctor at 2am while coughing up no more than a standard co-pay is re-assuring.

Around here, the UCCs are /requiring/ you to designate them as PCPs or they won't see you. Basically everybody is swamped and nobody wants any more business.

Healthcare needs a reboot. Socialize, please.

I'm fucked for normal healthcare, but I've got an amazing dentist and oral surgeon on my team.

[Broughden]

Tylenol and alcohol, worst pain killer combination ever.

I agree with Gryeyes, if the pain is bad you are going to want it taken care of immediately.  Plus, I doubt that anyone in such extreme pain is going to be thinking rationally about how much it will cost to make the pain go away.

As for Virginia and Urgent Care facilities, god I miss those.  We had one in Reston, Access, that had a better setup than the hospital next door.  Fully loaded with a helicopter pad attached to take people to a specialized hospital if the patient needed attention above and beyond what they could provide.  Very short wait times and they were open 24 hours a day.  They have since been acquired by a group that has taken the service in to the shitter, but the concept should really be expanded nationally and in to Canada.

The NY governor and mayor of NYC tried to do this. The hospital lobbyists killed it. DOA. Screamed to everyone who would listen...."They are going to destroy healthcare!!!!!"

[Sky]

We have at least two in town, which is in NY. Maybe it's different in the city. These aren't some high-tech facility, just office space with a waiting room and a couple exams rooms. I used to use them for "get out of work free" cards, aka I've got the flu and work wants a note. Since they put in the thing about making them PCP or they won't see you, I just show up at work sick, fuck 'em if I'll pay out my ass just to get a note to point out the obvious.

[Stewie]

I'm so glad I don't have to go through this kind of thing.
I'll take our socialized health care any day of the week over the medical cost horror stories I hear from the U.S.

[Bzalthek]

C. An abscess tooth is the most intense pain you'll ever go through. I've had broken bones, had teeth drilled without anesthesia, been ran over by a car, burned my arm from the elbow to the tips of my fingers and nothing even came close.

There's a Mr. Darwin outside to see you.  He says he's sorry he's late.

[Strazos]

I've been told Kidney Stones are worse. I've had a stone before, but never a tooth problem, so I'm not sure.

The ER was shocked that I was still cogent and able to walk upright when I came in.

PS: Morphine is GREAT. 

[Arnold]

post deleted

[Hawkbit]

I've been told Kidney Stones are worse. I've had a stone before, but never a tooth problem, so I'm not sure.

The ER was shocked that I was still cogent and able to walk upright when I came in.

PS: Morphine is GREAT. 

I've passed two small stones over the past five years (I've since learned to drink LOTS more water).  It is by far the most excruciating pain I've had in my life.  Starts as back/side pain and evolves into OMFG I'm dying kinda pain.  As in, can't even call into work and tell them I won't be there kinda pain. 

[NowhereMan]

My dad suffers from Gall stones, as in once every couple of years it seems, which does not bode well genetically and I'm really hoping that it's not that trait I get from him. On a more note, back when he was growing up in Donegal the treatment for gall and kidney stones was taking a trip in the 'rattler' (ambulance with crappy suspension) to Dublin and back (approx 2-3 hours each way) on shitty uneven roads. They then gave you a few pints of Guinness and hopefully you passed the stones.

[Strazos]

I've passed two small stones over the past five years (I've since learned to drink LOTS more water).  It is by far the most excruciating pain I've had in my life.  Starts as back/side pain and evolves into OMFG I'm dying kinda pain.  As in, can't even call into work and tell them I won't be there kinda pain. 

The best I could describe it was being stabbed in the kidney with a dull rod, having the pain radiate around my side in a very distinct line, hits the middle of my abdomen, and then shoots straight down into my groin.

I apparently was suffering from it for 3 days and didn't even know it. Up until the Saturday morning when I went to the ER, I thought I was having a urinary tract infection or something. It's extremely uncomfortable feeling like you have to urinate constantly...and then somehow not having to.