You ll have to imagine the scenario. Long before we sprung forward it was the early dark of winter. Adam came home complaining of back pain and nausea. He didn t eat dinner a first. So, I offer to take him to the emergency room cause frankly, he wasn t looking good.

Because men act like nothing bad could ever happen to them, we ended up at Cedars-Sinai s emergency room around 11:00 P.M. By this time Adam is on the floor writhing in pain. Although the emergency room was almost empty we had a half hour wait or so.

As soon as we get a bed the intake nurse and resident on-duty are sure that he s suffering from a kidney stone. A condition with no cure just a waiting period as one waits for the stone to pass.

So, we re hoping we ll be out of there with some pain medication and on our way. No such luck. While Adam s in pain on the hospital cot we get a lovely visit from a hospital insurance representative. She proceeded to ignore me and ask Adam thousands of questions about his insurance coverage and our ability to pay for health care.

Some time passed. Then things changed. Adam got a morphine drip and we were shuttled of to the imaging wing of the hospital They were going to perform a cat scan to rule out the possibility of something other than a kidney stone. As we re in the room waiting for it to begin, a nurse runs into the room asking the cost of a cat scan. He explains to the bored technician that they have a uninsured patient who wants to know if he should get one.

Impervious to our presence, he laughs heartily. Man, he says, Why do you think it s called the cash scan? The nurse, obviously new to the world of the uninsured, looked perplexed. The technician informed the nurse that just a head a torso was five thousand to seventy-five hundred. A whole body costs ten thousand dollars.

When the disembodied computer voice came on, Adam held his breath on command and went through the cat scan machine.

Needless to say the bill totaled more than ten thousand dollars. An after hours fee for coming after 11:00 P.M. now we know the reason for the wait. About seven thousand for the cash scan and the rest with miscellaneous medications and a charge for every doctor or nurse who ever blinked in our direction.