. So some people might find this interesting or maybe depressing.
Remember how a couple of weeks ago I mentioned
I had a Cauvin test. And the reason I had a Cauvin test is when I got back from our show vacation,
I was in Martha's Vineyard. I was having some headaches and tiredness, which could be nothing,
could be covered, could be allergies, could be something else altogether. So my doctor initially
said, just because we really don't want to miss it, let's first do a KOVA test and rule that out.
We don't want you walking around contagious if this isn't allergies. If it's coronavirus.
So we did the Koven test. It was negative. Okay, good. We ruled that out. So then my doctor said,
let's just get a bunch of standard bloodwork. We'll check your blood counts. We'll check
for infections. We'll check liver function because Martha's Vineyard has a lot of ticks.
Let's rule out Lyme disease. I wasn't aware of having been bit by a tick, but seems smart.
Martha's Vineyard and some of those islands, I think Block Island, Nantucket. Think there's a
heavy, heavy amount of teq flying around walking around there. Do ticks fly? I'm not even sure.
In any case, I wasn't aware of being bit by a tick, but my doctor, in an abundance of caution,
said, let's set up the bloodwork. I go in. There's no wait. The phlebotomists sits me down.
Great service. I'm in there for five minutes. Bing, bang, boom. Nine vials of blood lighter.
I head out and everything looks fine. That five minute visit was thirteen hundred
forty two dollars worth of blood work. You have to see this bill I got, which we're going to put
up on the screen for our our visual audience. So you've got the puncturing of my vein itself.
That was sixteen dollars. I guess that includes the alcohol swab and the needle.
And who knows whatever else. Some of the blood tests are cheap. So, for example,
like my basic blood count was only 83 dollars. The liver function test, which is the C reactive
protein that was 53 dollars. And then some of these tests are way more money. So since I was
tired, we were looking at thyroid. That one's one hundred and seventy six dollars. Checking for Lyme
disease was 150. Something called DNA RNA, Zeka. I guess just testing for Zika virus that was
almost five hundred dollars. And in total this was one thousand three hundred forty two dollars out
from which my insurance negotiated a big discount for themselves and paid a portion of it,
leaving me with a 75 dollar copay. I guess you would say for the bloodwork,
this is another one of those examples of a fundamentally broken system. And there
are so we could do an hour on each of these aspects, the huge sticker prices to account for
insurance companies negotiating discounts to account for people without insurance or people who
never end up paying huge sticker price and then negotiating down five minutes in the hospital,
theoretically. Thirteen hundred dollars for someone. Seventy five dollars for me because
I pay five hundred a month for my insurance. In other words, when I got my appendectomy, I
mentioned I had to pay my full two thousand dollar deductible. I paid 500 bucks a month for insurance
to have the privilege of only owing two thousand for my appendectomy. Here I am
paying five hundred dollars a month in my health insurance premium to have the privilege of only
owing seventy five dollars for the bloodwork. And of course, all of this is a complete disconnect
from the real actual cost of these things. Trash. Broken system. And we I mean, listen, I wish I
could say Joe Biden wins and we fix it, but we know it's much bigger than that. Joe Biden wants
a public option and to negotiate some drug prices. We need a much bigger systemic change. It's worse
with Trump. But this is going to be Amena. I don't want to be pessimistic, but. I think in the best
case, we've got a decade before we really make substantial change to this system. And we'll be
talking about that more for sure once we know who will be steering the ship for the next four years.