The Cost of Poor Health

The past couple of years have been expensive for my family when we look at the cost of poor health.  A lot of it is obvious in missed wages and doctor/hospital fees, but sometimes it’s the intangible costs that can be more important.  The emotional costs and missed opportunities can’t be overlooked when discussing true costs.

20 months ago I had surgery on my neck to remove a couple of bad discs.  I was an hourly contractor at the time and only missed about 15 hours of work since I had a cool boss who let me work from home some for a week afterwards.  The 15 hours of missed pay hurt, but I think I missed more in the perception from my boss and co-workers on my reliability.  I went to physical therapy every week or two for more than six months and was on pain medication all day while at work and home.  I recovered from the surgery and kept my reputation in tact, but can imagine that those who aren’t as lucky as I am post surgery could have a hard time with promotions.

This same neck injury, which I’ll need a second surgery for sometime in the next two to six years, also shaped my decision for my job change.  I ended up taking a pay cut to find a job that was within walking distance to my house in case I can’t drive again for a month post surgery like 20 months ago.  I also changed industries and returned to the same type job I had five years earlier.  I can practically do the job in my sleep and can take pain meds as needed without it affecting my job, much.  The cost for this is the lower salary I’m making due to my change in industries and jobs.

The direct costs can be big for poor health even with decent insurance.  Every time I go to physical therapy I have to pay a co-pay of $40 a visit.  I’ve been as often as four times a month this year and have had gaps in between visits no longer than six weeks.  That has added up over the past five years I’ve had this issue to well over $3,000, maybe closer to $4,000.  My wife had a dental problem that insurance didn’t cover and we’ve paid over $2,500 for it and have more expected.  We also both took time off from work for her surgery and had to miss vacation time. 

While I was recovering from my surgery last year, my wife had a scare with her heart due to the stress and a false positive from her stress test.  She spent four days in the hospital being examined, lost out on vacation time and called for extended family involvement  as our parents had to be on call and stop their lives to help us take care of our son since I couldn’t drive and my wife was stuck in the hospital.  Throw in the direct costs of both of us hitting our max coinsurance limits added in another $2,000 in unexpected expenses.

The idea for this post came up for me because I’m spending the afternoon with my mother-in-law today and am missing work again.  She had surgery for an intestinal issue.  My father-in-law took off all of last week and the first two days of this week.  My sister-in-law took a half day yesterday and my wife is taking a half day tomorrow to be with her since she still can’t do much for herself.  As I would expect most family members would do, we’re all happy to take care of her, but the cost for all of us is still there.  Taking half-days and (kind of) working on line while here we all avoid having to use vacation time, but missing in office time always burns a favor with the boss that could have been used later.  Lost productivity in stressful times like this is a cost that doesn’t show up immediately, but seems to add up as these instances become more frequent. 

Then again, maybe having a bad neck and thereby having access to pain pills isn’t such a bad thing on some of these bear market days.