So in preparation for our World Cup Brazil trip next month, I’m going to a travel clinic to get vaccinated tomorrow. Unfortunately, the health insurance through my company does not cover travel vaccines, and before I could really complain about it, I found out that pretty much no modern health insurance in the United States covers them. They’re not considered necessities… since no one really needs to travel outside of the country, right?

So leave it to money-grubbing Americans to open up travel clinics all over this city and charge $70-80 just for a “travel consultation” – to discuss where you are going, diseases you should be aware of and how you can get them, etc. That fee doesn’t cover any vaccines. When you want a vaccine for something like yellow fever, in New York, it costs somewhere between $145-160. If you want the Hepatitis A vaccine, it will cost $95 per shot (there are two), and that doesn’t even cover the “administration” fees for having someone give you the shot… because you can’t really give yourself the shot. Well, it’s a good thing that my travel visa fee ($160 USD) got waived with proof of World Cup tickets because all that saved money is just going toward my vaccinations, and then some.

I’m convinced that this is the subtle way our lovely country wants to indirectly discourage us from traveling and realizing that there is a world outside of the United States that actually matters.