We need an idiot tax... I know because I'm an idiot

For the past few weeks, I've been struggling with a fever.

And no, that's not a euphemism. I mean an actual hot brain, exhausting, sweaty, alarmingly high body temperature fever that kept coming over me at regular times during the day, until eventually it just came and stayed.

That was Week Three, when I was back east on a business trip, and I spent about three days stumbling around New York City with glazed eyes and burning ears and occasional lapses in consciousness.

So I took Tylenol, which helped. But what I didn't do is go to a doctor - I just thought, oh, well, you know, I'll just sweat it out, or something.

I realise, of course, that the technical term for a person who thinks he can "sweat out" a powerful and insistent fever is a "complete and total idiot," but like most men my age, I view going to the doctor as a kind of surrender, something just-so-slightly unmanly. Doctor? Hah! Let the weaklings go to the doctor for medicines and whatnot. Real men face the pain in an unblinking standoff.

But, you know, eventually I blinked. I left New York for a board meeting in Greenville, South Carolina - which is a lovely mountain town in the western part of that state - and as I slobbered and blinked my way there in the rental car, my hot and burning head just a few inches from the steering wheel, I passed a giant, spanking glass building.

It was Greenville's shiny new hospital. Without thinking, I pulled into the emergency room, and presented my sad self to the nurse.

She took one look at me and admitted me. They instantly began running an alarming series of tests, and hooked me up to an IV.

The IV, I'm here to tell you, was like a wonder drug itself. Even though it was just salt water, I instantly felt better. I could easily get used to having one a day - what I like to call the Michael Jackson Lifestyle.

So, five hours and many, many terrifying tests later - for a while they speculated that it was all due to blood clots in my lungs! - I walked out with a quasi-diagnosis - a massive bacterial infection of some kind was running wild in my body - and a prescription for Levaquin, which my doctor described as a "nuclear bomb" kind of antibiotic. The side effects, he warned me, are extreme drowsiness and the increased possibility that the tendons in my feet will snap apart.

That was over a week ago. My tendons are intact, but I've spent the past 10 days lying around the house in a drug-fuelled haze. Sort of like Charlie Sheen, except in my case the drug in question is Levaquin, and the house is occupied by only one female, and she is a Labrador Retriever. (And that's not a euphemism, either.)

Here's what's interesting, though, for those who aren't familiar with the American health care system: as of today, I have no idea - zero - what the whole thing cost. My Writers Guild of America (WGA) health insurance is good, for which I'm grateful.

I do know what Levaquin costs - about $40 (Dh147) per pill, which for a 10-pill prescription is a lot of money. But I paid $15 for the whole bottle - another reason I'm pleased with my WGA insurance.

And yet, this is a perfect example of the biggest problem with the American health care system. I was treated - essentially for free - in an emergency room, but only because I left it until it was too awful. In other words, I created the emergency by being a macho, doctor-avoiding fool. For which I was penalised not a jot.

Had I left my grocery shopping, say, to 3am, I'd have to go to the all-night grocery store. And I'd pay a little more for the privilege.

What I mean to say is this: I should have to pay more because I'm an idiot, and if I knew that's how it worked, I would have had a powerful incentive to get this all dealt with in a less urgent fashion.

Instead, without a financial incentive, I treated myself in the most expensive way possible - an expensive way shared and subsidised by everyone else in my insurance system - for which my total out-of-pocket cost is about $15. The solution is for more of us to pay more out of pocket, to be price-sensitive, to create a market. A market creates lower prices for everyone, even morons like me who leave it all until it's too serious for regular office hours and the el cheapo antibiotics.

You can't run an effective, fair, and rational health care system without some kind of Idiot Tax.

On the other hand, I'm feeling a lot better. Looking into getting one of those IV thingys for the house.

Rob Long is a writer and producer based in Hollywood