Thursday, May 2, 2013

Peace Corps Timeline: Medical Kit



June 2012 - July 2012
After receiving the medical kit I started to arrange appointments and researching were I could get everything at the best price, this was very tedious and the most expensive part of the application, lucky for me I was working a part time minimal wage job and no health insurance...hurrayyy for me!!! The medical kit asks for the following:

Difficult

Medical Exam
Attached are several forms that need to be answered and signed by a MD or DO. About your health and current medical history. Had to go twice. ($135)

Lab Tests

You need to take a blood, urine and tuberculosis. ($340)

Shots

You need to get Tetanus, Polio, MMR and Varicella shots. ($59)

Easy

Dental Exam
DDS must complete evaluation form and x rays must be provided. In case you die and your teeth are the only thing left, that way they can identify you...just kidding. There are some DDS that offer everything for free on certain cities, unfortunately my city didn't have any of those DDS, cheap bastards! ($80)

Eye Exam

Basically get your prescription if you are blind like me, or just get a note you have 20/20 Superman vision. ($60)

Grand Total

-$674

But good news you do get reimburse for all of this, how much!! Not a whole lot...but it's better than nothing!


Medical Exam

Reimbursement $70
Lab Tests & Shots
Reimbursement $55
Dental Exam
Reimbursement $60
Eye Exam
Reimbursement $12 

Giving the grand negative total of:

-$477

This was hard work though, I had to call many many offices to get the best prices and negotiate. As you can see the most expensive part of the medical kit are the lab tests, so my recommendation is to shop around and try to negotiate. I didn't want to throw the "I'm a Peace Corps Volunteer" line, but fuck it your doing this to help out people; it helped me in some situations to get a better deal, I also offered to recommend them to other Volunteers that may need these services.


After a stressful month of getting everything accordingly, I made copies of every single document. They recommend it in case it gets lost in the mail. They mention to use a courier such as FedEx or UPS when you send the documents, its funny because USPS is obviously less expensive and they are government funded, Peace Corps is government funded, the irony. So I went and shipped it off to the nearest FedEx Kinkos and made some copies. ($30)


Giving the grand negative total of:

$497+$15 (fingerprints) = -$512 

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