Calling the Dr., talking to the nurse, asking for antibiotics for a very sore throat.
Being told: "No, you have to come in for a culture."
Arriving at the appointed time, having the Dr. walk in and look at the throat and say: "Yup, it's bright red and infected. Here's your prescription." No culture. Just the sore throat I already TOLD them I had.
I don't know. Maybe in this crazy day and age $30 isn't too much to spend to get a perscription? It seems silly, though, and a waste of time for me AND for them.
What do I know? I'm not a doctor.
10 comments:
*sigh* dad....
Antibiotics do NOTHING for a sore throat.
Antibiotics kill bacteria. You are undoubtedly suffering from a virus...or you wouldn't just have a sore throat.
All you do when you consume antibiotics when you aren't suffering from a bacterial infection is help weed out weaker bacteria and leave the world with more bacteria resistant to antibiotics.
lrn2biology
David
or MAYBE....you just abhor doctors in general!
(and generally ignore their advice too!)
I think David's point is correct.
I am no Doctor but I have seen them lots and lots of times, sometimes they can not figure out what is wrong they go to Google.
LPC
I'm wondering why you got anti-biotics, too.
Maybe the pills are something else?
I had strep once, can't remember what I was given for it...hope you feel better, anyway!
Here they just shine lights in your eyes and interrogate you about whether you smoke.
Just for the record. No.
$30 for five minutes is hardly, from the doctor's point of view, a waste of time!
:-)
Anastasia
My doctor's favorite line, after taking my $30 is, "It's nothing to worry about."
I told him I want that as a epitaph on my tombstone: "The doctor said it was nothing to worry about."
To quote Dr. Luther: "To live medically is to live wretchedly."
Lutheran Lucciola and David are right. antibiotics are usually useless in the case of the sore throat. Most of the time sore throats are not caused by the streptococcal bacteria. Plus, even if you have it, it will go away in about a week with or without antibiotics (many strains are not effected by omoxi/penicillin). So unless you have some immunodeficiency disease, you are just helping pay for your doctor's kids' college tuition.
(At least this was the info related to me by an old girlfriend's father who is a real doctor)
This got me to thinking...$30 for five minutes. Multiply that by 12, which is how many 5-minuteses there are in an hour, and you get $360 an hour, which is $2,880 a day and $13,000 a week even if the doctor takes every Friday afternoon off to play golf.
Figure the doctor probably works 46 weeks a year, and that's $596,160. Of which he has to pay a certain portion to the partnership, to cover overhead, staff salaries, supplies, and equipment. But he probably still gets *well* in excess of $475,000 a year.
And that's assuming the $30 for five minutes is all he gets. Or is it merely your co-payment, a small fraction of what he gets from your health insurance?
Let's suppose this is the case, and that your health insurance pays him (to pick a number out of the air) $150 for your visit. In that case, your doctor gets $14,400 a day, $64,800 a week, and $2,980,800 a year.
All this, taken togetherm, means your personal pet peeve is not only well-founded, but far from being personal, it is one thing driving up health care costs and ruining the whole system. It's a national issue, or ought to be!
Anastasia
Well, we should probably halve those figures, considering for every five minutes he spends seeing patients, the poor doctor must spend another 5 dictating his notes.
So he may only make a million and a half a year.
Anastasia
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