Take Me To Post Comment Form I recently visited a Healthcare facility, and found myself leaving before seeing a doctor. Allow me to provide some background before I explain why I ended up leaving.

I don't get sick very often, and even less often than that do I go to the doctor. When I don't feel good my patience level is about nil...and continues to go downhill the longer I don't feel well.

When I walked into said facility, there were 6 to 8 'healthcare professionals' standing around in the office chit-chatting...one person sitting in the waiting room. Young woman dressed in blue scrubs opens the sliding glass window and asks me what I need. (Really?) I smile and say that I need to see a doctor. Here's the rest of the conversation:

Blue Scrubs: Have you been here before?
Me: Yes
Blue Scrubs: I need your drivers license and insurance card.
Me: I don't have insurance.
Blue Scrubs: Well it's going to be $85 for the visit.
Me: I know.

Snicker and an 'ooh' in the background from one of the multitude of 'healthcare professionals' that obviously didn't have a thing to do but stand around and jack their jaws.

Blue Scrubs hands me a little clipboard (after I've handed her my drivers license) with a sticker on it that I have to fill out with my name, date, DOB, etc. I turn around to take a seat in the waiting room, and I hear one of the multitude in the office say, "get her social security number".

Again; Really? If I'm self pay, what do you need my SSN for?

I take a seat in the waiting room so that I can get my glasses out to fill out the stupid little sticker (what are they going to do, paste it on my chest?), go back to Blue Scrubs at the window and trade clipboards with her, as she now wants me to verify the first page of personal information, include my SSN, and fill out the two or three sheets after that...and "you can stand here at the window while you do it, you don't have to sit down". Well, what if I want to sit down because I don't feel good? No, I didn't say that. But I'm making a point about 'healthcare professionals'.

Get the paperwork filled out, ask (purposely) what I've forgotten on the first page because I want her to ask for my social, which she doesn't - just tells me to sign it. I've already signed the other three pages. Whatever.

"Take a seat they'll be with you directly."
How long is directly?
Remember, don't feel good and patience is nigh on empty.

Girl/patient comes from the back and reunites with her girl friend in the waiting room and they leave. I'm alone. For about ten minutes. Then a young mother comes in with her obviously ill 4 year old. Poor little booboo; had a runny nose, could tell she had a fever, and didn't feel good either. Mom tells her to go play (?) and little Ella takes a seat in the children's area.

To make a long story short, I sat there for twenty more minutes listening to Mommy harangue Ella for coughing and sneezing her germs around Mommy as she had just gotten over being sick herself and didn't want to become re-sicked.
Poor Ella. She continued to get razzed because Mommy doesn't want her to sit in her lap (the child is sick and wants comfort from her Mother), then she's razzed because she's sitting on the floor when there are plenty of chairs to sit in (Ella's response, 'I just want to be close to you Mommy'), then told to go get a tissue (there's a bathroom in the waiting room, and there's a box of tissue sitting next to me) when Mommy could have easily gotten her tail up to go get her sick child a tissue...or better yet, reached into her pocket for a tissue as I'm sure Ella's nose hadn't just started to run when they walked in the building.

Once I'd had enough, about thirty minutes, of being made to wait...and being made to wait I was...and listening to Mommy harangue her sick child...I got up, picked up the box of tissue, walked over and handed it to Mommy...then walked up to the sliding glass window and pointed at the door. When Blue Scrubs deigned to open the window with a quizzical look on her face, I mumbled "I may be back tomorrow" and got the heck out of Dodge.

And the moral of my story is:

There is no such thing as Healthcare...as there is no care in the health profession.
It's just a big money making business.
And since I have no insurance and have to foot the bill myself, I get to pick and choose who I'm going to give my hard earned dollars to for my health.

Imagine this.
I went to Walmart on the way home to pick up some unexpired Mucinex, as I'd been using expired Mucinex, and ended up spending $74 dollars and some change.
Got a whole lot more for my $74 dollars than I would have for my $85+ dollars wasted at the 'Healthcare' facility.

Yes.
Yes, I am jaded.

And yes, I am better.
But I still don't feel good.