Broom Hockey for a Mutual Activity

The three brooms came home in good shape--that's a first!

Usually one or more gets broken.

The difference this time? Elley had an emergency room visit. She leaned down to untangle her broom with someone else's just as another young woman took a shot at the wiffle ball.

Result? A split chin and sore jaw joint!

One of the YM leaders is a doctor, another is an EMT. They checked her chin and agreed, "she'll need a stitch or two." I thought so too. The split looked deep, and gaped open. The emergency room doc saw it differently. (And curiously, by then it didn't look so deep.) He just cleaned it up, put some glue on either side so the tape wouldn't come off, taped it and sent us home. We were only there 15 minutes.

As we were checking out, I asked what the charge would be--we have a high deductible for our insurance and will end up paying for it anyway. The clerk didn't know. And she had all our information, including our insurance company, even before we registered. The EM nurse had asked for Elley's name and birthdate, and that was all they needed. So, in the future, if I want to get medical treatment and pay for it myself, I'll need to go to location where I've never been treated before. In light of the current health care debate, this might be necessary.

In my opinion, the greatest problem with the high cost of health care is that there is no price list for services. We can't look at the prices and say, is this split chin worth a $1000 EM room visit? What if we elect for the $250 bandage instead of the stitches?

What if hospital B does this same procedure for 25% less?

If it were my car, I'd be sure to know what the prices were before getting new tires, etc. It is slightly different with our health, but I think our decisions would be better if we knew the actual cost of things (and the cost wasn't inflated to cover those people who don't pay for their care).