Ultra-downed

Now that I have a job with health benefits, I can actually see a doctor. I mean, I could also do this on my travelers insurance but one feels  a bit like an innocent raking up a criminal record because the whole time they are noting down reasons to make you uninsurable. You see, once  you go for certain problem, you are forever barred from being insured for that problem again  – say you have pain in your stomach but they can’t find out what’s causing it. You can NEVER go to the doctor again for anything to do with your stomach/that general area of the body.[1] You have appendicitis a week later? Shucks. Die (or pay 10,000).  And of course, with my travelers insurance I could only go for urgent care (a broad term basically covering anything that you cannot be reasonably expected to travel home to deal with. This works well when on a three week vacation, but otherwise can be a little problematic…).

Anyway, tangents aside, I had an ultrasound a few weeks ago (and NOT because I’m pregnant). The way my insurance works, you have to pay the bills upfront and then you’re reimbursed after filing a claim. So even though you know that you are not actually losing any money, you still feel like a cow that has been milked to the udder limit when you see the disgusting fees that are racked up for ten minute procedures.

Let me dissect the ultrasound, for instance:
Services:

1. Nurse takes you to changing room and shows you a gown to put on. Returns once you’re in a massive light blue paper sack that doesn’t close and leads you to the examining room.
   Time: 5 minutes.
2. Ten minutes later: Doctor comes in and chit chats while you lie, mainly naked, on the table. Then gets to The Basic Consultation, consisting of: “So why were you sent for this ultrasound?” (price: CHF105.18)[2]
3. Doctor performs ultrasound. Time: 4 minutes. Price (upper abdomen CHF90.13; organs CHF94.12; digestive tract CHF59.27)
4. Doctor chit chats again while you attempt to look respectable in the aforementioned XXL sheet of paper that slides open in inconvenient places.  He also mentions you’re fine. Time: 3 minutes. Price: complimentary.
5. Oh and, use of technical equipment: CHF13.42

Total time: 15 minutes plus 10 minutes waiting in dimly-lit, sterile-makes-me-think-of-sick-people-and-death room. Total price: CHF362.10

Leaving the building with that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you know you are likely not going to die in the very near future: priceless.

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[1] Note, The undiagnosed part is important. If they do diagnose you, say with an ulcer, and then you returned with a different problem that was diagnosed differently, then you WOULD be covered (but NOT if you had another ulcer).

[2] CHF is s Swiss franc, one of which is equal to about USD 1.05, so basically the same.

Itch?

It’s a rainy Saturday morning in Geneva and I waken slowly, my mind vacillating between dreaming and consciousness,  my thoughts continuing from sleeping to waking. I’m now on one of the notorious UN short term contracts of 3, 4 or 6 months, joining thousands of others in constant limbo land ready to take off on the next outward flight should they not be needed anymore. Actually, I don’t mind it. I’m career commitment phobic at the moment – afraid to get stuck, unready to decide and so it suits me quite well….but then at the same time, one always has to be thinking about plan B. It hovers in the mind like a low-grade cold (in fact, I also have a real low grade cold at the  moment).  I usually know when it’s time to leave a place: I get this itchy feeling like a cat in a cage, and I start clawing at the bars. But I don’t really have it right now…..and that’s weird, because usually by eight months I’d be starting to scratch.