r/Rants•
bichboi669

Fuck the American health care system

I have been going to different doctors for 6+ months, since the middle of 2024. I have spent hundreds of dollars in copays and procedure costs and medications and I am still expierancing all the symptoms and they are progressively getting worse. One of the big issues is I'm expierancing symptoms in too many different body systems, skin, kidneys, heart, bowels and stomach, headaches, joint pain, muscle weakness, and I'm sure there's other things I could add to the list, but I'm so pissed off right now that I can't think. I'm pretty sure we could find 1 or a few diagnoses for everything and figure out how to treat that / those few things, but for some fucking reason these ass hats are treating every single symptom like a separate issue because apparently throwing different meds at every symptom is more reasonable than trying to find a root cause and treat that. I have insurance. My primary care doctor is nice but unhelpful. He said I had a vitamin D deficiency when I first started seeing him and okay great. Took vitamin D for a while got blood work done again, no more deficiency. That's it, no more answers and what seems like an unwillingness to test for anything else. I have been sent to 2 GI doctors, one who over 3 appointments, was in the room for a combined total of 8 minutes, I am not exaggerating. And the other, who I only switched to because the first one wouldn't do anything helpful, just tried to schedule me for a colonoscopy. Asked what my amount that I would have to pay at the time of the appointment was and they said that was over $500, I was like "I have insurance, what is it with my insurance?" And they were like, "that's with insurance." Got them to send me a price break down, and what they are billing the insurance for is over $14,000. Again this is not an exaggeration, tere is no typo. My insurance is an 80/20 plan, so even with insurance paying over $13,000 I'm still liable to pay $500 and some change at the time of service. I asked about payment plans, and they have 2 options, one requires me to pay almost 300 at time of service and the other is almost $200 at time of service and I would be paying either off for 3+ months. I don't have a "good" job. I make $10 an hour. I, like most Americans, have to pay rent, my electric bill, car insurance, phone bill, internet, have to budget in for gas and food, ect. Even with mine and my fiance combined income we exit the month with $200 max and that's like a high estimate, a lot of months we have to push something off to the next month and pay it when we can. My entire point is, there would never be any fucking point where I could be able to pay $500 upfront for anything! I don't go out to eat, I don't get to do any activities that aren't paid for by someone else, and I still end up having to go to a food pantry at least once at some point in the month because food is so expensive I'm not always able to afford it. I've decided that I would just be better off dead. Who cares what's going on with my body! I'm 25 by the way. The whole reason I even started going to the doctor regularly like this is because I was expierancing various symptoms for somewhere around 6 months and was finally like "this shit keeps getting worse, might as well go to the doctor." And here I am all this time later, no symptoms relief, no solid diagnosis, and I'm out hundreds of dollars and still being told I will have to pay hundreds more for any hope of actual answers. Fuck this. Fuck this country. And fuck the American health care system.

Posted Mar 7, 2025, 9:45 PM UTC

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