Eric had a 2 am virtual book reading...meaning neither of us slept much last night! But he enjoyed the reading.
I was busy working on breech projects all day, except for a short nap in the afternoon. We thought about doing some renovation work, but settled for doing it tomorrow. The kids are excited to help.
To answer the quiz questions about my ER visit:
1. The entire visit took 1 hour
2. The final bill (ER fee + x-ray) was 48 Euros, around $58 USD. I was anticipating about twice that amount based on Ivy's ER visit last winter in Chamonix.
When I was paying the bill, I saw this price sheet taped to the checkout counter. I asked the woman if I could take a picture, and she said, "Sure, go ahead!"
To those of you who live in France or other countries with a single-payer healthcare system, this might not be remarkable. But for those of us in the US, it's unimaginable.
When we seek medical care in the US, we usually have no idea of what it will cost us beforehand. The hospital usually cannot tell us, even though they are the ones creating the bill! We go in and hope that we can afford it, and then we wait a month or two or more and get a bill that is usually shockingly high.
Case in point: Zari had to get a rabies shot when she was 4 years old. We had to get it at the local hospital as it wasn't stocked in our pharmacies. The final cost? $7,000! Even with our insurance, we had to pay $1,500 out of pocket. It's outrageous, and we patients are hostages to a system that lacks transparency or accountability.
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