Got shot in both arms today. Typhoid and tetnus/ diptheria boosters- $150. Ridiculous. Went to the Niagara County travel health clinic in Niagara Falls; paid a mandatory $25 consultation fee for a “consultation” that never occurred and another $20 on top of that because the county of my residency did not provide the vaccines that [...]
Got shot in both arms today. Typhoid and tetnus/ diptheria boosters- $150. Ridiculous.
Went to the Niagara County travel health clinic in Niagara Falls; paid a mandatory $25 consultation fee for a “consultation” that never occurred and another $20 on top of that because the county of my residency did not provide the vaccines that I needed and therefore had to go to a higher populated county. $45 for absolutely nothing. Sure, I was given an internet printout of the CDC health webpages on China, which I previously printed out at my parent’s home for free. $65 for the Typhoid and another $35 for tetnus vaccines. The funny thing is that I paid $150 ($115 if you only include travel specific innoculations) and I consider that to be a somewhat cheap sum to pay for service provided through the travel clinic. In fact, I was almost pleased. At least I did not go to a Passport Health; which is a private company that has been taking over travel related innoculations from public health departments in the USA and charging enormously exagerated amounts of money. This is the only place to recieve travel related vaccines in the area of Rochester, NY. I was quoted by them $550 for a round of Japanese encephalitis vaccine, over $600 for Rabies………and to top it off you have to pay nearly $50 just to walk into the place. That is America. Sometimes, I like to laugh at it from afar.
But at least I DO have access to health care, even though it is really expensive….grumble……I hate these concluding rebuttals that begin with “at least”……haha…..it all ain’t no thing I suppose…whatthehell, whatthehell.

SUPPORT
The only way I can continue my travels and publishing this blog is by generous contributions from readers. If you can, please subscribe for just $5 per month:NEWSLETTER
About the Author: VBJ
I am the founder and editor of Vagabond Journey. I’ve been traveling the world since 1999, through 93 countries. I am the author of the book, Ghost Cities of China and have written for The Guardian, Forbes, Bloomberg, The Diplomat, the South China Morning Post, and other publications. VBJ has written 3728 posts on Vagabond Journey. Contact the author.
VBJ is currently in: Rome, Italy
-
July 11, 2012, 2:12 am
Would you suggest getting japanese encephalitis shots?
🙂
I’m coming to Jiangsu end of July and hope to maybe travel a bit in the wilder parts of china. Maybe hike up a mountain. Is it easy to get the shots in China?
Thanks
-John
Next post: Japanese tattooing
Previous post: Getting use to computers