Tale of Two Pills

Barley is among the uninsured. Not sure if anyone sells pet health insurance, they probably do, but I'm not the sort of pet owner who'd buy it anyway.

My pup has had his woes of late, a probable stroke, and when I took him to the vet it appears he's blind in one eye and feeble in other documentable ways to boot.



But the big thing was this shit going on in his mouth. An infected tooth, possibly, or maybe a tumor. Even with gauze tying his snout and a cute veterinary assistant helping sooth him, he wouldn't let the doc get a good look at it.

So the doc prescribed an antibiotic and ants to see him back after it. The dog improved almost immediately after getting the antibiotic, so I'm hoping for infected decayed tooth instead of infected mouth cancer.

Meanwhile, I got a spider bite that looked so angry I wondered if it was a Brown Recluse bite. Even if it wasn't, it was getting worse instead of better and I went to the doctor.



Now, Barely's vet bill came to $139 including the antibiotics. My copay at the doc was $20 and my copay at the pharmacy was $10, but I'll bet you dollars to donuts my trip to the doctor cost more than Barleys if you look behind the curtain of insurance.

Especially since the doc also cut out the seed corn callus on the ball of my left foot while I was there. As an afterthought.



But the antibiotic for my infected non-brown-recluse bite, it's the same drug, the same dose as my dog gets. Exactly. The pills even look the same.

So if you're uninsured, go to the vet. You'll get the same medicine, they won't pretend you should have insurance, and you'll probably save money in the long run.

There, health care crisis solved. I'm more serious than you probably think, but then, I'm one who thinks doing away with the Federal Reserve would do more for health care than anything Congress is actually liable to do.