The front desk nurse tells me they didnt return the call because the doctors dont renew prescriptions for people who they havnt seen in 90 days. Which seems sensible except that a) people who go to community health centers generally cant afford to go to doctors just for scripts when they arnt sick b) people that use community health centers tend to use multiple doctors/clinic depending on price and c) the scripts I had were for 150+ days prescriptions. So I say I'm here please refill these prescriptions and they tell me even though I'm not sick I need to make an appointment to be seen by a doctor...and! they are so busy there are no open appointments for 3 days. After going to the nursing supervisor and complaining about the lack of call backs I basically bully my way into an appointment during the regular lunch time. As the clinic is mostly funded by tax dollars being seen completely unnecessarily by a doctor only costs me 20 dollars. I see a nurse who asks my height and weight and who takes my temperature. They dont take my blood pressure even though I'm here for blood pressure meds, and I am "seen" by doctor. Of course he was foreign, from Austria like the Governator. Never seen any American born doctor in any of the clinics I've been to. And by "seen" I mean the guy walks in to the room, agrees to refill my pills and comments on how we are both chewing the same gum. And leaves.
What a complete waste of time; mine, the nurses and the doctors. This clinic was turning actual sick people away because they were so full but went through a this whole pretend doctor visit dance with me for basically a completely trivial paperwork exercise. The lead nurse argues this sort of system keeps people safe but I think its hurting people by driving up the cost of medical care with unnecessary doctor visits. Not to mention taking up time, space and resources that could be spent helping actual sick people. We should be more worried about people not going to the doctor because of hassle and cost than possible misuse of prescription meds that might happen if a doctor renewed blood pressure meds without seeing the patient. Dont we have pharmacists to back check for this very reason?
The cost of my "visit" multiplied by the number of people who also need to make trivial visits to get scripts..which is just about everyone, and you get an idea why the health care system is so damn expensive. This is one thing that concerns me with the whole government health care/Obamacare plan. Not only will be people be much more likely to go in and see a doctor for trivial stuff but the prices will be tripled because people think its "the government" paying for it and forget their taxes are funding the government. On the other hand if we go to a pharmacy based system like they have in Europe where you only see a doctor for serious or unknown illnesses all those drive by "Urgent Care Walk in Clinic" centers in strip malls will go out of business. And like our "troops", where are these "nurses" going to work if we take away their industry. Everyone who is upset about the soldiers pissing on the corpses of Taliban need to think a minute about where those "people" end up if they arnt killing people in other countries. If we end our wars, that like 400,000 more unemployed people who need jobs...and who get their kicks off pissing on dead bodies. Do we really want to "bring our troops home"?
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