I am happy that I can love my wife and my children dearly. However, the flipside of this is whenever any of them show any signs of getting sick I get extremely worried. I simply do not want anything bad to happen to them, and am worried to go to a doctor too late. My gut instinct is to go to the emergency room for every small issue, but I consciousely understand that this is not a logical response.
Do any of you have suggestions on how I can figure out what an appropriate response to different types of sickness symptoms would be?
Yeah, ER is almost never the right place. But if you do go to an ER, make sure it’s attached to a hospital. The free standing ones are notorious for predatory billing and will take your first born after saving them. And your insurance will fight to not cover it.
Urgent care and minute-clinic type things can be good. Primary care physicians are typically best, though they may be difficult to get an appointment for.
Urgent care facilities commonly double as ERs. In that case, I believe they’re legally required to get you to sign a specific form before they can charge you for an ER visit. Speaking from experience, it’ll just about 10-40x the rates and they’ll still charge you for an urgent care visit on top. Also speaking from experience, check your insurance plan before doing this. My insurance card said $150 copay for ER visits, but the plan was actually $150 + 10% (still unbelievably good in freedomland), plus they refuse to cover any of it anyway and the appeals process literally takes the better part of a year.
That said, it can literally be the difference between life and death. Fighting insurance, while a huge PITA, is much better than a dead child. It’s just the sad reality we live in, in order to have checks notes poor health outcomes and healthcare quality tied to whatever your job (if you have one) happens to offer. 🦅🇺🇸🎆