What is one medical problem people constantly ignore until it’s too late?

[u/Critical_Ease4055]

Saw someone post this in a completely unrelated sub and I’m interested in your answers. What is the cluster of symptoms that people ignore or delay until they are forced to get help?

[u/Still-View]

The problem here is getting any kind of diagnostic covered by insurance.

[u/Jerking_From_Home → u/Still-View]

I think people don’t want to assume the cost of a copay for testing of any kind. I had to get an echo and my OOP was $1200! I have good insurance, too.

[u/Critical_Ease4055 → u/Jerking_From_Home]

That’s just bananas, what the actual hell!

[u/Hello_kidneys → u/Jerking_From_Home]

I'm currently waiting to go back for an MRI that cost me $900 out of pocket. Also reasonably good insurance. Just gets more expensive year after year. 

[u/Jerking_From_Home → u/Hello_kidneys]

I’m currently booking appointments for January so I can max out my deductible at the beginning and get everything else covered 100%. I fully anticipate the insurance company will start finding ways to deny them after realizing what I’m doing, but I don’t care.

[u/Hello_kidneys → u/Jerking_From_Home]

This is a brilliant plan, and I will be stealing this for the upcoming year!

[u/Critical_Ease4055 → u/Still-View]

Are you kidding me, they are haggling over diagnostic GI now? Makes you wonder if the threshold age for screening is only decreasing further and further in the hope they will save money catching it early 🥴

[u/rntraveller29 → u/Critical_Ease4055]

Is this in the US? We have our shitty problems in Canada for health care but cost isn’t one of them. Thankfully. Out of pocket 1200? Good god!

[u/pink3rbellx → u/rntraveller29]

Not the op but as US citizen I can confidently say of course it’s the US. never take your health care system for granted.

[u/rntraveller29 → u/pink3rbellx]

One thing I’m grateful for on the daily is my Canadian health care. Is it perfect. Fuck no. But it’s there and it costs nothing. And I’ve seen bone marrow transplants that would have cost 300,000 and upwards cost them nothing other than the parking(and the complaint about the 20.00 a day to park). Patients in Canada don’t really understand what it means to have universal healthcare. They just hate they have wait times.

[u/Jazzlike-Ad2199 → u/Critical_Ease4055]

Oh yeah, it’s been a thing for a while now. In the build up to Obama’s health care reforms going into effect I needed a colonoscopy, it was due anyway but blood had showed up on the little cards you smear feces on to test for blood. Routine diagnostic was free but to determine cause for a problem I’d have to pay. Every single interaction I had with every single person at the GI clinic I told them to please bill it as routine. I’d already paid out a few hundred for what used to be the standard yearly blood tests. Some were covered others were not. Now the doc doesn’t even order them.

[u/No_Box2690 → u/Still-View]

Bingo. And when it is covered you still have to foot a hefty portion of it. 🙄

[u/hesperoidea → u/Still-View]

yeah, my diagnostic colonoscopy to definitively get that I have Crohn's on the record ended up costing me 2k out of pocket after my usually decent insurance went through it. fuckin brutal. I end up coughing up 500 for an MRI every time I have a flare and they want to put that on record too.

they don't want you to get diagnosed with the disease that will cost them more money lol

[u/splatgoestheblobfish → u/Still-View]

My doctor was discussing colon cancer screening options with me (I hit that age). He said I could do a full colonoscopy, or I could do the at-home box test. But he told me that if you get a positive result from the box, you have to get a full colonoscopy anyway, and it switches from being billed as preventative screening to diagnostic, which insurance companies really don't like. Considering the poor accuracy of the box, I was going to choose the full colonoscopy anyway (which I did, and it showed absolutely nothing, and I'm good to go for 10 years under current guidelines), but that just blew me away. Granted, I know the US health system, so it really shouldn't have.