He actually tried to make an appointment, but he hadn't specified a Primary Care Physician through his HMO and none of the local doctors were accepting new patients. And radioactive spider bites are going to require a referral to a specialist. Good luck with that.
111Spiderman: Into the US Healthcare System
37Spiderman: Into the Kafkaesque
6I almost choked on my tea when I read this. 😂
2
Just herniated a disc and was told it's really bad. Can't afford treatment so I go back to full duty at work with a physical bulge in my spine. Not really sure why I'm paying $600/m with no damn benefit
60If you can afford physical therapy it's very worth it. It probably won't fix it, but it can reduce the amount of pain you're in.
10
I got slapped with a $4000 bill for daring to go to the emergency room. Do not reccomend.
33Yep. Fell and hit my head, spent a night in the hospital, $6,000 bill. With "good" insurance.
16Last time I went to the emergency room was thankfully covered by worker's comp, $10,000.
11Sounds like a good excuse to not give your real information and then run after they help you
7My wife was in hospital for six hours and the bill was $60,000. Luckily our insurance is great and covered it all except for our $100 copay for ER visits.
Very different from Australia where I'm originally from, where we wouldn't have received a bill at all.
3
The only Dr that was able to treat him was "out of network" and he didn't have the money to afford anything out of network :(
29I went to Urgent Care because I got a cut in my hand from glass. It was pretty huge, but not bad, and I held it together with wraps.
In that waiting room was 20 people in front of me.
Most were disheveled. They look homeless or was struggling with mental issues.
It is absolutely insane how little resources we dedicate to not helping people with mental issues, and so they have to use other services and end up flooding these places. And my heart goes out to them. It truly does.
But I waited 4 hours before I got any help.
27Cries in freedumb
22Sucks on gun for comfort while Stars and Stripes Forever plays loudly in the background
14
I had a cycling accident, bike tipped over at 40km/h (25mph) and abraded my skin away on one hand in a 2cm (1 inch) circle
I got an appointment at my local doctor at zero cost, but it was almost a week later. Doctor confirmed it was healing well.
It's cheap here in Australia, but there can be a wait when it's not urgent
Though once in hospital for suspected heart problem (it was actually just panic attacks) someone was in for spider bites. Redbacks (practically the same spider as the black widow) had nested in the space between his bed head and the wall, and he had been bitten several times was trying to retrieve something that had fallen behind the bed. He was not having a good day
20In fact this isn't too wrong for lots and lots of spiders out there. Most of the time all you have to do is disinfect the bite location with some alcohol and drink lots and lots of water.
6LPT: When the advice above doesn't work. It suddenly isn't your problem anymore.
11
In 2002, health insurance wasn't as bad as it is now. It was around 2005 when it really went to shit.
5To be fair. In a developed country with free health care the doctor probably would have either sent him home to sleep it off or maybe to a specialist where it takes months to get an appointment.
4I had this happen to me in Canada but the bite had swollen up to the size of a softball. Most painful bite of my life - like searing white heat agony.
Anyway, drove 15 mins to the closest clinic and got in within 20 minutes. Gave me a course of antibiotics and told me to go to the hospital or call 911 if it got worse.
15You missed the opportunity to get super powers. Your loss. ;)
3
We've got good insurance and we are thousands of dollars in medical debt and about to get in more because of a mystery illness I have.
3Personally, I've got bitten by a spider around a month ago.
I know what spiders are dangerous here, it wasn't one of those. My foot was swollen for a couple of days, and I could have gone to a doctor at any time. But getting out to the doctor, explaining something weird, making a battery of exams, all while sick, and for no treatment at all really sucks.
2If he lived here, there would probably never be a SpiderMan... so... I guess it's good that he lives in the US 🤷?
-2Or he didn’t want to spend 12 hours waiting in emergency in Canada or the Uk?
-21Buddy, in America we could wait 12 hours, get a $1000 bill to look at it, then wait 12 weeks to actually get treatment if the radioactive spider bite requires referral to a specialist, followed by a $4000+ bill if the only radioarachnidologist is "out of network"...
25You left out the part where after the 12 week wait for treatment your referral expired and now need a new one before they'll see you.
12
Are you implying you don't also have to wait in America? Lmao.
18Yes. We just die.
9
Welcome to literally all emergency rooms anywhere. They're emergency rooms, the bigger the emergency, the further up the line you move. A spider bite in many instances is not that big of an emergency. A spider bite from an experimental radioactive spider with who knows what done to it? That's at the "getting a government agency involved" level of emergency.
8Last time I was in a U.S. Emergency Room, I was there a good 10-12 hours. The time before that, it was 8 or 9. And both times I came early in the day when there was almost no one in the waiting room.
4
