A friend of mine is in the process of applying for a green card. A part of the process is getting a medical exam that is suppose to make sure you don't have "the cooties" and plan to bring them to this country. Fair enough, isn't it?
But wait. Like many other services in America, this one is out-sourced to the private sector, which means, in order for a doctor to be certified for providing a green card exam, he or she needs to follow some rules regarding what needs to be examined etc.. However, there is no regulation regarding the price of this service. In the name of free economy, each doctor can charge as much as he/she wants. Actually, if you think about it, this is can be a good lesson for the green card applicant who, in many cases, comes from a country with a different economical approach, where (God forbid) the government regulates the fees for services like that. What a better occasion for a lesson in American economy then while applying for a green card!
The list of doctors who are certified by the government (USCIS) is long. There are many options in the San Francisco bay area and not knowing that the fees for this service are not regulated, my friend sorted the doctors by the closest location to the San Francisco downtown area, where he works. In order to get a cross-reference for each doctor, he googled the doctor's name.
The first doctor he came up with, who has an office downtown (how convenient), apparently has a website, which seemed somewhat too flashy and shiny to my friend (he said it reminds him of the Walmart banner ads in his yahoo email...) .
The first thing he noticed when he called the doctor's office is that, unlike any other doctor's office, they answered right away... they even didn't ask him to wait on the line for 2 minutes!
As for the charge? An examination for a green card costs $499! (I guess this is another lesson in American economy where whatever the price is, it ends with 99). This looked to my friend way more expensive than he imagined. Since he is insured by health coverage, he can get the same exam from his doctor and pay nothing but, here, he has to use the services of "doctor greedy" and pay whatever the charge is.
The high price and the "x99" pattern made my friend somewhat suspicious and therefore he decided to check some more options. Another doctor he called, who is located further away but still in the downtown area, told him he charges $350 for the same service. This is where my friend realized that this is truly an open market. He just needs to keep on calling to find the right price. Indeed, every doctor he called gave him a different quote. Another "fact of life" that my friend has come to realize applies here: the geography factor. The further away the doctor's office was, the lower the price was. With that in mind, he decided to call a doctor who works in the Richmond area (a.k.a the new Chinatown). In a thick Chinese accent, he was told that the same service is going to cost him only $190! I'm sure we all agree that this is a long way from the initial $499 offer.
Well, this is not the end of the story. As a last step, my friend called a doctor, located in the Mission district. This time, in a thick Spanish accent, he was told that the same exam will cost him only $100! Again, all these doctors appear on the same list. All are certified by the USCIS to perform the same exam! It is needless to say which option my friend chose.
2 comments:
Hey, this is NYC Dog Walker Diaries...Who are you? I'm having trouble figuring it out? Please let me know. Sam.
Question: Since this is The Politically Incorrect Blog for SF, which I can fully appreciate, when are you going to start writing about all the military feminist that are running the city there. Especially the one's who have no more feminine grace left in them. They have replaced their innate femininity with an overwhelming desire to de-ball the men of SF. :)
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