I was a mother/homemaker. My husband worked for $2.50 per hour. I could take my daughter and myself to the doctor without insurance and afford to pay his fee without any problem. I also stopped by the pharmacy on the way home and don’t ever remember thinking it was expensive. I paid the doctor and hospital fees for delivery without insurance. I also used BC pills which I paid for monthly.
Things really have changed!
And if you did not have the money, the Doc would work out a barter that was acceptable.
Dad was a federal employee. Did OK but we were certainly not well off like they are so often now. We had medical insurance of course but it was not for everything and anything. Like you, we paid our own doctor bills out of pocket. Insurance was for the hospital.
I was always sick with tonsillitis and must have taken gallons of penicillin. I remember going to Rexall Drug and Mom getting the medicine. Never remember any real heavy concerns about the cost of the doc or the medicine.
Yeah, things have changed and not for the better. We had a Carnegie Library that was warm in the winter and cool in the summer with lots of books and a bike rack out front. We went there all the time to read. I read science books and Popular Mechanics and my friend read nature books. I became and engineer and he became a doctor. My buddy and I could ride our bikes just about anywhere in town, to the stockyards and to the airport. All the kids walked to school and played all the way home. We threw our paper route early in the mornings before school and raised the flag in our Cub Scout uniforms. When we went to the stockyards on Saturday we always got a hamburger and then went in to watch the auction. Two kids 7 to 9 years old at the counter on bar stools with all the ranchers and in our high top sneakers. We were hot stuff. People would see us around town and call our Moms to tell them where we were and that we were OK. We frequented the feed store to look at the Allis Chalmers tractors, the train station to see the people change trains from the Katy to the MoPac, the water plant just to watch the water being filtered, the Pepsi bottling plant to get an Orange Crush, the theater and later the bowling alley and the ice plant in the summer to cool off. We would pick up pop bottles to buy a Popsicle. When we got older we raced slot cars at the track downtown across from the barber shop.
It was dang near a Norman Rockwell childhood. That part of my life I’d do over every day and twice on Sunday! I’d give a lot if kids today could have that kind of childhood. If only America could be that way again.