Medical madness.
So, navigating the medical process with no health insurance. A challenge to test even the most resourceful of us.
My mom called her family practice just to get an estimate of what it would cost to do this whole medical review. $1300. Yes, you are reading that correctly. That option, completely and absolutely out.
I started calling around to VA clinics in the area yesterday. I called two in Charlotte and one in Rock Hill. The went essentially like this:
"Hello, such-and-such VA clinic, how may I help you?"
"Yes, my name is Lindsay and I was calling to try and get some information. I am a Peace Corps applicant and was told that we had the option of going to a VA clinic in order to complete our medical review. Does your clinic serve Peace Corps applicants?"
"*confused pause* Ahhh...do you have discharge papers?"
Hahahahahaha.
I should be getting some phone calls back later on today. It's also been suggested to me on the boards in the facebook group (Future Peace Corps Volunteers) to try community clinics, since I have no insurance and am under-employed. Ooh, also! I found another girl who has also been given a country...she's got China, though. It's so strange...I'm not sure why they would do this only to those slotted for Mongolia and China. In any case, I should be hearing something over the next couple days.
2 comments:
Hi. I was just reading your blog and had to comment. I don't have health insurance either and the medical and dental clearance was so freaking expensive! My husband found out he had like 5 cavities during his dental exam and it cost us like $1,300. Yeah, that sucked, but at least his chances of having other cavities aren't as great since 5 have been filled haha! Now we just need to make it for 7 more months w/o insurance.
Hey Heather!
Ahh, I'm sorry that the process was so expensive...I can't imagine having to figure out how to cover two people! Where did you end up getting your med review done? After about a zillion phone calls, I have found a community health clinic that is going to do the whole thing (except for polio vaccine...having problems finding anyone who will give boosters to anyone over 18. What did you do for that?) for about $75. Definitely a far cry from $1300 (ouch).
Good luck on the rest of your waiting period! Where have you been nominated to go?
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