About two weeks ago, we had to take poor Brewer to the doctor and hospital. He was constipated for about 4-5 days. We tried some basic medicine, but it wasn't working and it got to the point he refused to even sit on the couch.
So on a Thursday, we scheduled an appointment with a local pediatrician through the McGhee Center for the next morning (ours at home will do the same on a 24-hour notice like this). When I got home at 3:30pm that day from class, he was inconsolable so we called to see if we could come right away. Dr. Nihan's office said yes, so off we went. We met with her for an initial consultation and exam (no paperwork for us) and she sent us across the street to a private (more expensive than public) hospital and within 45 minutes, Brewer had received an exam, medication and a precautionary X-ray for $65. We showed the staff his passport, but otherwise filled out zero paperwork.
We returned to Dr. Nihan's office immediately afterwards for another consultation. She asked us to visit her again the next morning. Brewer felt a little better, but was still not completely OK, so we stopped by. She asked us to call her over the weekend on her personal cellphone if we had any concerns, and we did that Saturday afternoon. Upon her request, and after Brewer was feeling better, we visited her office again on Monday for her own verification. The total bill for these four visits and a weekend phone call was $55.
Dr. Nihan is a friend of the McGhee Center, but I'm fairly sure this was a standard procedure for her. And the Alanya hospital seemed to treat the other tourists there in the same manner.
Kelly and I are currently fighting - from overseas - two different fronts (a provider and our insurance provider Humana) on how to get the former paid by the latter for a $90 shot Kelly received for a travel vaccination for this trip. And that's after filing pages and pages of paperwork before we left. How did American healthcare end up so far from this Turkish healthcare experience? I'm an economist and live by cost-benefit analyses, but exactly how much are we Americans getting for the extra monetary costs and time effort involved for our healthcare?
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