On Friday my hearing felt like I was in a tunnel.  That’s never a good sign.  Of course, I immediately thought I had an ear infection.  That night when I got home, I asked Mr. Money to put some naturopathic ear drops in my ear to help fight off any infection.  I hate taking any medicines that aren’t natural.  When I woke up on Saturday, I was feeling a little pain and my jaw was starting to hurt.  Uh oh.  Of course, being as weird as I am, I scoured the internet for home remedies for ear infections.  I wanted to treat it myself.

At 3 P.M. I decided I was going to go to the Urgent Care Clinic to have a doctor look at my ear.  There was no sense in me fooling with it any longer.  I was afraid I’d have permanent damage.   When I got to the clinic, I immediately asked them how my health insurance would cover it.  If I was going to have to pay the $100 ER copay, I needed to know.  They told me that my insurance would treat it as a specialist, so I’d have a $40 co pay.  Not too bad.  After waiting 45 minutes, the doctor came in, looked at my ear, tugged on it, asked me a couple questions, and then diagnosed me with a middle ear infection.  Great.  He wrote me a prescription, and I went on my merry way.

I went to the pharmacy I normally go to, they said it would be about 10 minutes, so I wandered around the store.  When I went to pick up my prescription, they told me the total was $50.  I was expecting it to be around $10, so of course I was shocked.  They told me that I hadn’t met my deductible yet (ugh) and that was the cost.  It was even a generic.

 I was bummed, but what could I do?  I had to have the medicine to clear up the infection.  I paid, and went home. $90 for a darn ear infection.  I was glad that I didn’t pick a high deductible health plan because I would have paid more!  Oh well, at least I’m going to feel better soon.

Are you happy with your health insurance coverage?

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