[amluto]

You mean how the Bay Area, which is fairly urban, has precious few urgent care clinics open until 10 pm and, I believe, literally none open after 10pm? I went to one of these urgent care clinics once and got charged $650 for about 5 minutes of doctor time and a single DermaBond stick. The latter costs something like $20.

Oh yeah, I asked how much I would be charged before the doc saw me and they refused to answer.

$100 markup my arse.

[uberduber]

In LA, Hispanic neighborhoods have 24 hour urgent cares but the doctor quality is all over the place though usually bad.

Urgent cares used to be pretty upfront. I went to an urgent care a couple of years ago, $99 advertised in the window. I go in, fill out all the paperwork and they tell me it's going to be $150. When I point to the window, she says it's expired. I start to walk out and she tells me to come back and gives me price. This is not the only time I've had to walk out over various health things, it's ridiculous. They think you won't do it because you're ill and act that getting angry over this is some sort of insane response. So now I just pretend not to have the extra money.

Anyway, I use Heal now. So happy that the VCs are funding this, hope it lasts.

[stuff4ben]

You went to the doctor for a bandaid? Seriously? Could you not apply said bandaid yourself? Why would you waste a doctors time and your money for that?

[jacquesm]

I don't like the tone of your comment at all. It's very well possible for a person to end up in the hospital where the right treatment is to 'stick a bandaid on' on one end of the treatment spectrum and a much more invasive or complex procedure on the other when going in with roughly the same symptoms.

For instance, if you work a lot with tools and dirt then there is a fine line between blood poisoning and a mere scratch, they will both start out the same but you won't be able to tell what's in your bloodstream until it is too late if you're going by symptoms alone. By the time the choice is amputation above or below the knee or you've gone into septic shock you've lost the window where you might have been ok. More people die from this stuff than from heart attacks or strokes.

So in some cases, when the exact contaminant is not known it can be a good decision to go to the hospital to have something looked at, and it shouldn't cost an arm and a leg (pun unfortunately not intended) to do so.

Nobody goes to the hospital for fun except for a very few individuals that have something wrong with their heads rather than with their bodies, and that's before we get into things like people with compromised immune systems.

[amluto]

DermaBond is not a bandaid. I personally did not have a container of sterile saline, a pack of sterile gauze, a DermaBond cartridge, and the expertise to evaluate exactly what was needed.

And yes, I have bandaids.