My son-in-law works a job requiring heavy labor and lots of heavy lifting, and day before yesterday he injured his foot. As the resident expert in all things medical, I advised ice, elevation, and ibuprofen, and waiting a day to see if it got worse.
It got worse, so we had to take him to an urgent care. (He couldn't drive because the injured foot was the driving foot.) The first one we visited was packed; the second two were closed. We finally found one tiny one near the local Whole Foods which was still accepting patients, though they closed right after admitting the SIL. (This was at 10:00 in the morning, by the way.)
You had to have a credit card they could put on file before they would even let you sign in. That's with insurance.
It took us four hours to be seen. Ninety percent of the process was paperwork -- getting the SIL's insurance verified, getting the credit card verified, getting information about where the SIL worked and who his spouse was and where he lived, in case they had to come after him for the cost of the medical care. They had four people doing the paperwork. This was all before anyone even asked him what was wrong.
Ten percent was him actually seeing a doctor, which took about 15 minutes.
Good thing we don't live in one of those countries with socialized medicine.
I will say the staff was very friendly and doing their best.
Oh, and he's fine, by the way. It's a stress injury to his Achilles tendon. Rest, ice, a stronger anti-inflammatory, and compression. He can't work for a week, which means he doesn't get paid for a week. Life in the American precarity.
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