Paula Light is the lovely hostess for The Monday Peeve, where I get to do the thing I cannot do in real life – air my inner most complaints.

This week’s complaint is all about doctors and their ridiculous costs.

I had an appointment at the beginning of the month. The appointment was to discuss my blood test results and do a follow-up discussion on what the doctor has learned based on my medical history.

Before I continue, I should give you a back story.

I have been having health problems for a long time. In the recent years, after being diagnosed with a connective tissue disease (doctors call it Lupus, I, personally, don’t know what it means), I have been referred from one specialist to another, my list of symptoms is now nine pages long with very tiny font. Not only no doctor can diagnose me beyond Lupus, I’ve been blacklisted by life insurance companies for having said problem list. Actually, I wouldn’t be blacklisted if not for my mom trying to buy a large amount of life insurance on my life.

Back in January, Mom recommended me to switch my family doctor to hers. So I switched my family doctor to this guy.

Back to the appointment…

I gave the doctor a month to pull my medical records and go over it. It turned out he was on vacation for much of the month. There was no work done to my files other than a quick skim during the 10-15 minutes I was waiting in the tiny room. He came into the room with a brick-size stack of papers aka my medical file from the last 7 years.

He jot down a few notes. I complained about my back, which he diagnosed as knots. I was in and out in less than 15 minutes.

Last week, I received the claim from my insurance. $300 was billed to the insurance. For what? For a 15-minute consultation, which the doctor was unprepared?

What’s worse is I have to pay $180 of the $300. It’s crazy because hardly anything was done. He let me know my Vitamin D was abnormally low and prescribed my Vitamin D tablets. That and diagnosing my back problem, that’s $300? Wow!