Mostly, I write about books, or maybe films. No doubt, I will do that again soon, but recently I have been experiencing various forms of health care, and my latest such visit was for the annual flu shot, so I’ll write a bit about that. For some years, I opted out of having this injection, but after hubby lost a week of work and felt terrible for even longer, I went back to getting the shot. After all, the couple of times I had influenza it was no fun at all.

Current United States policy (via the Affordable Care Act) requires that insurance cover the flu shot as a preventative measure, without any co-pay from the patient. So, my doctor’s office has made a business decision to “stick it” to the insurance company—pun intended. See the attached screen shot of the EOB for this procedure:

Now, thinking that $248 is a bit steep for this, I just looked at GoodRx (a nifty site if you have never used it) and it tells me that the estimated cost for the shot is $32 at Walmart.

Now, going to my doctor’s office was convenient and fast, but I’ve had flu shots at the grocery store or at a mini clinic, and neither of those were inconvenient. Bottom line, the doctor’s office knows that they can charge whatever for preventive procedures, and my insurance has to pay for it, so they are taking advantage of this. Kudos to Walmart for making this injection available for regular folks. If you don’t have insurance, or if you want to keep it real, just go to the GoodRx site and put in your zip code. The site automatically offers several locations and price points. BTW, the average when I looked was $32.

As for Piedmont Athens Primary Care, they’ve made me think, yet again, that when insurance premiums go up again, and they will, their approach to business is one reason for those hefty increases.