WHY would the cost [care] of treating Lyme Disease be "costly" IF you have insurance to cover docs bills+meds?

Question

WHY would the cost [care] of treating Lyme Disease be "costly" IF you have insurance to cover docs bills+meds?

Answer 1

Well, it depends on what treatment program you're using, and what kind of insurance policy you have.

Maybe if you had the ideal insurance policy and the ideal doctor it would all be covered, and you would get well soon too.

But let's say it takes two years and you're still sick in bed. Say your spouse left you.

Unfortunately, these aren't uncommon events in lyme world.

Or say you go through your doctor, he gives you oral antibiotics, and then you're still having symptoms afterwards. Then say you reach a barrier in your insurance or your doctor's methodology, and you aren't able to have IV treatment.

Or say the IV treatment doesn't work, and you decide that your life is worth the cost of getting better. It's a confusing place to be in, you're sick with lyme so you can't think straight, and so you start trying different modalities. (this is very, very common)

This can be extremely draining financially.

My opinion on recovering from lyme is that more often than not antibiotics don't work. So this requires a person to go to alternative, holistic care.

Here is what this would cost, minimum:

1) Books, info ($100)

2) LLMD (lyme literate medical doctor visit) ($200)

3) 6 months supplements, herbs ($500)

4) Rife machine ($800)

This is phase 1. This is the cheapest I could imagine, because there is no driving around for the most part, and only one doctor visit.

I'd also like to take a moment to respond to the other answer's comment that people are making up stories about lyme not being treatable by a short round of oral antibioics.

This is simply the worst kind of misinformation, and reflects a lack of knowledge about chronic Lyme Disease. There are countless real life examples of people not getting better from the 3 week round of oral antibiotics. Log onto Healthboards.com and go check out the real picture. I doubt that these people are all making it up.  

For more information on this kind of deeply harmful misinformation, see

http://www.lymecryme.com/

Answer 2

It requires a three week course of antibiotics, some of the antibiotics used are very expensive. If you let lyme disease go untreated for long periods of time, it can get into the central nervous system, and that requires very long courses (greater than a month) of high doses of expensive antibiotics.

If you have insurance, the co-pays on doctor visits and medication or deductible can still add up to a substantial out of pocket cost. Costly could also be referring to the insurance company's expenses. This money doesn't come out of thin air, but usually from your employer who pays a subscription to the insurance provider along with all the employees.

There's also a rather odd belief that lyme disease somehow persists after treatment, totally undetectable, and requires yearlong treatment with the above antibiotics. If a month is expensive, imagine what two years would be like. There's also zero evidence that lyme disease needs that sort of treatment.

Edit:'Chronic lyme disease' has been exhaustingly studied, and nearly every major scientific and medical society has come out and said that the bacterium responsible for lyme disease has no involvement in the complaints these people have. Death threats and harassment of major researchers and university department heads have led to a lack of interest in pursuing further work. Many members of the group suffering from these problems have turned to 'alternative medicine' of the sort that is known to do nothing to human physiology, such as the work of Royal Rife and Wilhelm Reich, both of whom have been thoroughly debunked.