These days, my doctor's office, hereafter known as "the point of sale," reminds me of an upscale boutique stocked with luxurious merchandise betraying no visible price tag. If you need to ask what it costs then you can't afford it, as they say: a dictum we can now apply to bloodwork, CAT scans, and cholesterol testing.
Like children outside a candy store, our noses are pressed against the clinic window as we gaze longingly at the mouthwatering medical procedures available inside. Then we get a crick in our necks from gazing, which is ironic because our new health plan doesn't cover chiropractors anymore.
But even if we were so callow as to ask what treatments cost at "the point of sale," the white-coated sales clerks wouldn't know. They'd twiddle their stethoscopes while mumbling something about it not being possible to put a price on health and wellbeing.
We live in an age of super fast networked computers. I can't see why insurance information can't be entered into a database and a reasonable estimation of charges can't be made while you wait. But no. Instead, we must wait for an indecipherable bill to arrive three months later for outrageous sums of money for tests we've forgotten we had done.
Honestly, I've experienced more transparent transactions at the black market bazaar in Cairo than at my doctor's office.
