Sometimes, being a healthcare professional has its benefits. Sometimes not being a healthcare professional can cost you more than you know.
Meet me under the physician signature.
I am a nurse, working in research. One of my coworkers told the story of what had happened the previous week. Her stepson had gone to the hospital with severe abdominal pain and was diagnosed with a gastric ulcer. After diagnosis and his initial treatment he was discharged with a prescription for the rest of his treatment. Gastric ulcers are treated with a course of antibiotics and a medication to reduce stomach acids, letting the ulcer heal. It's all pretty standard. So she and her husband headed to the drug store to get the prescription filled. She was looking around the store when she noticed her husband was taking a while at the prescription counter. She went over to see what was gong on. He was talking to the pharmacist about the cost of the prescription, which was covered under their insurance.
He pointed to the small bag. "He said it's going to cost $200."
"WHAT! What's in there?"
So they opened the packaging. Inside the box were 30 blister-packs. Each pack had two doses of Nexium and two doses of two different, common antibiotics. Each day's doses nicely, individually packaged, and costing $6 each.
She looked at the pharmacist. "Get the doctor on the phone."
Minutes later they had three bottles of drugs, one for each of the drugs in the pack. Total cost --$15
Then she asked the pharmacist "How much does this cost if you don't have insurance?"
$700.
Now, these are not new drugs, these aren't even old drugs being used in a new way. They are just pre-packaged drugs. There is no way that combining these drugs into a blister pack increased the cost by that much (someone with math skills figure out how much they inflated the price). The drug companies are charging a fortune because the insurance companies will pay for it. But why should the patient pay $200 or $700 for drugs that they could be paying $15 simply because they don't know to ask if there is a cheaper alternative. Worse, how many people decided to suffer because they couldn't afford it?