Insurance abusers...

We are beginning to suspect that my OB/GYN may have been a bit of an insurance abuser. When we saw our new doctor yesterday, he looked at the results of the semen analysis and saw that we went to the urologist and he looked at us and said, "Your OB sent you to the urologist? Did he kick you out of his office when you got there?!" Because the sample's numbers, across the board, were really good and the sperm count itself was ridiculously high, we never should have gone to see the urologist as there was no concern of male infertility. But the urologist actually ordered a second semen analysis along with a test (that is NOT covered by our insurance) to see whether or not my husband's swimmers could penetrate through a hamster's eggs. I did a little digging on the hamster egg test and it is pretty controversial. For one thing a lot of doctors don't think that the results really mean anything but more importantly they kill the hamster that they get the eggs from!

Now, it is a long shot that my OB was doing that just so the urology practice could charge our insurance company, but the two practices are affiliated so we were being cynical and thinking that maybe they do a little "referring" of patients to each other's practices for doctor visits and tests that are completely unnecessary just so they can make the extra bucks. Talk about a conspiracy theory! What is more likely is that my OB was just busy with her practice and other patients and didn't feel like making the time to think about what might be going on with us so she passed me off to the fertility specialist and my husband off to the urologist. She was completely right in sending me to the specialists, but she was completely wrong in sending my husband.

Faster and easier for my OB? Yes. Ethical? Probably not so much. However, after yesterday's appointment with our new doctor I'm feeling pretty confident in his and his practice's ethics. I don't think they are out to waste our time and money just so that they can turn a profit, the profit is just an added benefit. I just finally feel like someone has our best interest in mind.