It also came about when unemployment was like 2%. At the time it was sensible. Now it’s stupid.
Makes me wonder if I should get it done. My father had crazy amounts of earwax removed in his 40s.
I use debrox every few months and it’s usually good for a pea-sized chunk. Highly recommend you try it before going to a removal specialist
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Used to get ear infections from digging at wax. Most annoying pain ever. Without insurance, learned to clean ears myself.
Hydrogen peroxide and bulb syringe for heavy build up.
Vinegar for damp ear, after swimming, or itchy canal.
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I tried hydrogen peroxide and bulb syringe so many times. And ear cleaning kits. It never works for me. The nurses usually have to struggle for a while too. I have narrow ear canals apparently.
I had tubes in my ears as a little kid - I would get horrible ear aches. Getting the gas mask in the hospital is one of my first memories. My mom had to put lambs wool with vaseline in my ears anytime I went swimming.
Anyone know the lethal dose of DEBROX for a fucking brown recluse? Poisonous spiders out of her ears is a villain in a horror film.
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The spider is clearly just using your ear as a potential hunting spot/house. Why would he bite the walls of his own house? Just let him be.
arachnoid membrane tho
Cockroachs in the ear were a once every couple of months thing in Chicago in my residency - don’t seem to see them in Reno. Drown them in viscous lidocaine and pull them out, usually in pieces.
MM MD
Shit I gotta not read this thread before bed.
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Just nothing we can do I guess
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Amazing–after a reporter called and started asking questions, they dropped the bill to $0. Everyone in America just needs their own investigative reporter and we’ll all be fine.
FWIW, in case anyone has the same thought I did when looking at the source (“Kaiser Health News”), I found this in their About Me:
Neither KHN nor the Kaiser Family Foundation is affiliated with the health insurance company Kaiser Permanente.
Yeah they’ve been around doing this work for decades and have never been affiliated with the insurer, not sure why they both share the name of the German word for king
They were both founded by same family / person. Permanente got spun off at some point.
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In Costa Rica and Mexico if your surgery is like $4k, they make you give them $5k in case of complications. Then they refund the money. I talked to multiple people who were shocked when they got the money back afterwards. They just figured it was a semi-scam like they do to you in the US.
Imagine a US hospital refunding money and not finding some bullshit charge to eat it up.
Healthcare pricing doesn’t have to be this terrible.
It’s the German for emperor. It’s derived from caesar.
Update on my anesthesia for colonoscopy/endoscopy that my insurance wouldn’t cover.
I’ve gotten several bills since with tons of line items, can’t tell if the anesthesia is in there or not - most are something like $10k+ of charges (20+ indecipherable line items), ~$7k of discounts, insurance pays $3564, I pay $18. The company my Dr. referred me to for the colonoscopy, the primary doctor there who did the actual procedure, the anesthesiologist, and the hospital all seem to bill separately.
I told the doctor I see at the colonoscopy company (who is different than the Dr. who does the procedure) about the anesthesia. She said they’d appeal and say that the endoscopy tube was good enough reason for full sleep vs sleepy (which the ins. co says is sufficient).
The colonoscopy company wants to arrange another endoscopy to see if the prilosec is working. Naturally I ask about the anesthesia charge and can we clear that up before the procedure this time.
30 minute Kafka-esque conversation ensues:
- No one knows how much the anesthesia actually cost. $350 was just the hospital’s estimate after calling the hospital and them needing to do a lengthy investigation to determine the price. Probably had to check my income first or something.
- No one knows if I’ve been billed yet.
- No one knows if the insurance company actually paid or not (assuming no since they sent me the letter).
- No one knows if the first charge was ever appealed.
- No one knows if the hospital even offers “sleepy”.
- No one knows how much sleepy costs, or if insurance would at least cover the amount sleepy costs and I pay the difference. Seems like a straightforward question but it’s like talking calculus to a family pet.
Now multiply this times a billion for someone already weakened and stressed out from fighting bone cancer - arguing over life-ruining money while literally fighting for their life. JFC
The colonoscopy place has a bank of a dozen girls who talk to patients about bills but mostly work the phones all day. Such efficiency.
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Those guys are a pretty major employer in the next county over from Louisville. I seriously considered a job offer from them back in 2014 when I was trying to choose what to do after college. Basically it’s a large call center filled with the highest paid phone agents in the Louisville, KY area (a place where a sizable % of the total jobs are call center jobs… seriously there are like 8-10 major call centers at any given time with multiple thousands of employees in the case of the biggest couple)… and the only thing they do is health insurance subrogation.
Health insurance subrogation is figuring out how to charge other companies/people for the costs of healthcare. Insurance companies pay companies like this absurd amounts of money to try to pass the buck onto other people because the ROI is great.
We spend billions of dollars a year in this country trying to figure out how to pass the buck through clever medical billing. This is only a small part of the waste our system creates in the name of ‘competition’. I’m sure there’s a ton of competition when nobody knows the price of anything lol.